


By Any Other Name

by SuchStuffAsDreamsAreMadeOn



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: AU, Amnesia, Angst, Blood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Retelling, Sexual Tension, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-13 09:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14746496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuchStuffAsDreamsAreMadeOn/pseuds/SuchStuffAsDreamsAreMadeOn
Summary: "Anya looked up at him with those blue, Romanov eyes, and Gleb pushed away all uncertainty.  It couldn’t be her.  He wouldn’t let it be her.  He had heard Anastasia die and for the good of Russia and for Anya’s own safety she would stay dead if he had to kill her himself.But Anya’s eyes had lost their fear and now held only sadness.  “Would you have pulled the trigger,” she asked, her voice quiet, “if you’d been told?” "A retelling of the Broadway musicalAnastasiain which a frightened Anya accepts a stranger's hand and his offer for tea, despite the nagging feeling that she recognizes his eyes.





	1. I Dreamed a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> This is a retelling in which the character of Dimitri does not exist. I love the story of the conman and princess, but I wanted a chance to explore the relationship that Gleb and Anya might have had. Every song from the show is referenced at some point at least once, so watch out for that! 
> 
> The whole work is written and I am hoping to upload a new chapter every day or so.
> 
> Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I dreamed a dream in times gone by  
> When hope was high and life worth living  
> I dreamed, that love would never die  
> I dreamed that God would be forgiving  
> Then I was young and unafraid  
> And dreams were made and used and wasted  
> There was no ransom to be paid  
> No song unsung, no wine untasted"

_There’s a rumor in St. Petersburg._  

Gleb rolled his eyes as he heard the whispers go by.  They thought they were being discreet, hiding the rumors from him – and, more specifically, his Red Army uniform – but he had heard the news in a meeting that morning. 

_There’s a rumor in St. Petersburg._  

That’s what the secretary had told him when he asked what the meeting was about.  After a hard look from him she had corrected herself quickly. 

_There’s a rumor in Leningrad._

Gleb had nodded, but he admitted to himself that, with the name change, the sentence didn’t have quite the same ring to it.  

“They’re saying the Romanov girl is still alive.”  Comrade Gorlinsky had announced as he dropped his papers rather forcefully onto the meeting room table.  This proclamation had been more than enough to make Gleb look up from his morning notes. 

“Which one?”  He asked.

“Does it matter?” someone across the table had quipped.

“The youngest,” Comrade Gorlinsky had said, looking Gleb full in the face.  “Anastasia.”

Gleb had done his best not to let his shock show.    

“The worst of it, of course,” Gorlinsky had continued, “isn’t this blatant lie that one daughter may be still alive.  It’s that the Dowager Empress, from her exile in Paris, is apparently offering quite a reward for the return of her granddaughter.  I’m afraid we will not be able to leave the issue unaddressed.”

“Have you heard?”

The whispering of a small knot of people standing near him brought Gleb’s attention back to the busy street.  

The general’s announcement that morning had shocked him, but his surprise hadn’t stemmed from the possibility of the rumor being true.  It wasn’t, of course. It couldn’t be. He knew with utmost certainty that the Romanovs – all of them – were dead. There were few things in his life he was as sure about.  No, it was shock at the idea that the people of Leningrad, his comrades, could find such delight in the idea of one of their oppressors, a symbol of the failed and detrimental regime incarnate, still being alive.  That was the incomprehensible part to Gleb. 

Gleb set his shoulders and turned to the task at hand.  The rumors would be put to rest, but that was not the job his comrades had agreed upon for him today.  Standing up on the small wooden podium that had been erected and draped with red for just such occasions, Gleb began calling out to his comrades, bringing them the good news from their new government.  

“The revolution has heard you, comrades!  Together we have thrown off the shroud of the old regime and now, as equals and free men, we meet each other today not in the Tsar’s St. Petersburg, but in the people’s Leningrad!”

The proclamation did not elicit the outpouring of joy Gleb and his comrades had hoped for. 

 

**********

 

A few hours later, Gleb paced through the busy streets of Leningrad.  He stamped his feet to ward off the cold and brushed past a few people bartering off blankets and cans of food, sidestepping a young street sweeper hard at work – as his comrades should be – and pulling up short to allow a truck to pass by.  

The ghost of a dead princess seemed to be haunting his steps as he made his way through the square.  The whispers had followed him everywhere he went, goading him, dragging the image of his father’s eyes, hollow and weary and full of shame, to his mind.  He pushed the sight, and the echo of screams, out of his thoughts and vowed to spend no more time thinking about a girl who was most certainly dead, no matter what the rumors. 

He had made his last speech of the day and was just setting his sights towards his small, shared apartment when a loud and sudden bang was heard across the square and then, much nearer, a scream.  

Gleb looked up in time to see a black cloud of smoke billow forth from the exhaust of the truck that had just passed him as it continued noisy on, but his attention was caught and held by the small figure huddled on the ground just a step or two away.                

The young street sweeper, who had cried out at the sudden noise, had dropped her broom and now cowered on the cobblestones, despite the dirty snow.

“It’s alright, comrade.” Gleb stepped forward quickly to where the girl still lay.  “It was a truck backfiring,” he soothed, kneeling to the girl’s level and picking up the fallen broom.  “That’s all it was.” 

She looked up at him and he was suddenly startled into stillness. Her coat and cloths were ragged, and there was a smear of mud across her cheek, but her head was crowned by a braid as the rest of her brownish blonde hair tumbled free over her shoulders.  Her blue eyes would have been striking on their own, but they were wide and terrified now. Her breath caught in her chest and Gleb wasn’t entirely sure if she was seeing him or something else. He kept his deep voice calming as he spoke again. “Those days of neighbor against neighbor are over.  There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

He reached out gently, but she shied away from his hand.  “You’re safe.”

The girl watched his hand for a moment, then finally nodded slightly, as if coming back to herself, and pushed herself to standing without his help.  Gleb followed, one hand holding her broom, the other still outstretched, placatingly, not entirely sure she wouldn’t run or collapse again at the slightest sound. 

“There, now.”  Gleb’s brow furrowed as he regarded her.  “You’re shaking,” he noted, concern coloring his voice.  He was right, of course. Her small frame trembled beneath the brown of her coat and she didn’t seem able to meet his eyes.  “There’s a tea shop just around the corner.” He reached out for her again. “Let me-”

“Thank you.”  Her voice was quick and firm, but Gleb could hear the fear under it. She pulled back from him and then swayed, looking again like she might faint, but she kept herself standing, seemingly through sheer force of will.  The girl looked up, finally met his eyes, and her mind seemed to stutter for a moment as she processed him, blinking rapidly. “But I – I can’t. I can’t lose this job, they’re not easy to come by.”

“You needn’t worry about that.  A general’s uniform goes a long way to help smooth those things over. It’s up to you, of course,” he added quickly. “But I do think we should get you somewhere warm for a bit.”  She was trembling still, although Gleb wasn’t entirely sure it was from the cold. 

She hesitated a moment, then nodded, the smallest smile touching her lips. “Thank you.”  This time the words were an acceptance, not a denial. 

Gleb guided the young woman up the street and into a small, dimly lit shop. The one room was mostly empty, but there were a few low tables in the back where the store owners served their product and one or two of the seats were filled. Most people had better things to do with their rubles.  Or no rubles at all.

They were quickly ushered to a quiet table as Gleb ordered two cups of tea and some bread. The man, clearly taking note of Gleb’s uniform, acknowledged with a “yes, comrade,” and hurried off. 

The girl watched him as he sat. He gave her a smile, doing his best to put her at ease. “My name is Gleb, comrade.”  He tilted his head slightly. “What’s yours?” 

The woman hesitated, as if deciding. “Anya,” she finally said, sounding not quite sure of the answer herself. 

Again, Gleb gave her an encouraging smile. “Pleased to meet you, Comrade Anya.”  

Anya seemed to be thawing out a bit and growing more accustomed to her surroundings, so Gleb let them sit in quiet for a moment while he studied her. 

She was pale and thin and almost laughably short compared to him, but her eyes had dark circles under them, as if she hadn’t slept well in a very long time, and her gaze kept flickering to the door.  

Their tea arrived and when it was handed to her Anya held her mug close to her chest. 

“The Neva is flowing again,” Gleb began conversationally. “Soon it will be spring.”

Anya looked up at him in shock and Gleb laughed. “Well it shouldn’t be that surprising. Spring does come every year, even after the long Russian winter.”

“No,” Anya explained quietly, “it’s not that. The way you said it, it... reminded me of something...”

She trailed off and Gleb gave her a look. “Well probably the song.”  Her eyes still held confusion, so he elaborated. “The revolutionary song?  It’s quite well known. The Red soldiers sing it all the time.”

“Oh,” Anya murmured, taking a sip of her tea. “Yes, that must be it.”  She didn’t seem convinced. 

“So, tell me, Anya. You don’t look like you’ve been in Leningrad long. Where are you from?”  

To Gleb’s surprise this question seemed to make Anya uncomfortable.  She was clearly Russian, what was the problem?

Anya chewed on her lip for a moment and studied Gleb, as if deciding whether or not to trust him.  “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. She must have seen Gleb’s confused look because she amended. “I mean I don’t remember.”

Gleb sat back in his chair.  “You don’t remember where you’re from?”

Anya shook her head.  “I don’t remember anything from before I was seventeen or so.  The first thing I remember is waking up in a small mining hospital in Koptyaki.”  Anya shrugged. “They said some people had been heading to market in a town a few hours away and found me by the side of the road.  There were tracks all around, but nobody else there. They took me back to Koptyaki and gave me to the hospital.”

“And you don’t know a thing before that?”

“No.  I woke up to rain against the window.  It was the nurses who decided to call me Anya.”

“You said a hospital in Koptyaki?” Gleb asked.

Anya nodded, taking a sip of her tea.  “Yes. Да.”

“That’s funny, my parents lived for a year or so in Sverdlovsk.  It was Yekaterinburg then, of course. I visited them once there.  I had been part of the war effort and I’d just returned home.” Gleb’s smile was tinted with a hint of sadness.  “I wanted to be just like my father.” Anya’s wide, beautiful blue eyes watched him and Gleb was shocked to feel heat rising in his neck.  He didn’t believe it was from the tea. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have interrupted. What happened after you woke up?”

Anya shrugged. “I stayed for a while after I recovered, but I couldn’t…. I couldn’t stay, I don’t know why.”  Something in her voice hinted to Gleb that there was more to that story, but he didn’t press. “So, I left. I wandered, taking back roads and sleeping in the woods.  I worked, when I could,” she added quickly, seeming to be suddenly reminded by the uniform who she was talking to, “and eventually I made my way to St.- to Leningrad.”  

“And you really don’t remember anything?”

Anya took a bite of her bread, regarding him again as if she was trying to decide how much to trust him.  After a moment, she seemed to come to a decision. 

“I have dreams sometimes.  Often, I guess. I see shadows, nothing distinct or recognizable, and I hears whispers, like voices that I can’t understand.  And sometimes...” she trailed off, her eyes flicking from his to the table, then back, “sometimes there are flashes of fire.” Her eyes grew distant, not seeing the room anymore.  “And I hear screams. And loud... shots...”

“Like the car,” Gleb murmured softly, understanding.  

Anya nodded, her eyes downcast.  Then she seemed to shake off the thoughts.  “But sometimes I see a beautiful bridge and a river,” she said with a smile.  “And I know that I have to go on, that I can’t be afraid. I can’t give up hope.”  Anya shrugged. “There’s something about Paris, too. I feel as if… someone is waiting for me there.”

Gleb let Anya finish all his bread – she seemed to need it – and didn’t press her further.  He paid the owner quickly and guided Anya into the street, handing her back her broom.

“I will phone your headquarters to be sure there are no problems with your job,” he assured her, standing a bit taller and clasping his hands behind his back at the mention of his new, functioning telephone.  He thought for a moment, then added, “If their phone isn’t working I will stop by tomorrow morning.” 

Anya nodded with another small smile.  Gleb was beginning to look forward to seeing it.  He wondered what a larger smile might look like on the frightened girl.

“Thank you, Comrade Gleb.”

“Just Gleb, please.  I’m in the square every day.  Maybe I will see you again, Anya?”

This smile almost touched her eyes.  “Yes. Maybe.”

Gleb nodded and Anya turned to leave, but a thought struck him and he found he couldn’t let her walk away without asking.  “Anya. Do you believe you will remember?”

She looked over her shoulder at him.  “Yes. I have faith. I know it all will come back, one day.”

With one last smile Anya turned and disappeared into the crowd.  

 

**********

 

Although Gleb never would have admitted it to his Bolshevik comrades, it was to his surprise the next morning to find that the telephone at the Department of Public Service Workers was operating.  He explained to the rather irritable woman on the other end of the line that he had delayed Anya’s work yesterday by an hour, that it was his fault, and that he was sure that Anya would work twice as hard today to make up for the delay in productivity.  For her part, the woman who had answered the phone countered that she didn’t care what he had done yesterday and that no one would have noticed if “this Anya person” had run off never to return as long as she didn’t take her broom with her, since brooms were in very short supply.

“Well, we all must do our part, comrade,” Gleb chided.  “I wanted to see to it that the girl would not be punished.”  He hung up, thinking to himself that perhaps it would have been better if their telephone hadn’t been working after all.

Anya’s face kept filtering through his mind.  Her striking blue eyes, her braid of hair, sitting like a tiara atop her head, her delicate nose and lips... these images had followed him home and had flitted around in his thoughts ever since.  They accompanied him into his morning meeting and distracted him until the sound of another name – foreign yet familiar – brought him back to reality.

“It’s time to do something about the Anastasia rumor,” Gorlinsky said, looking around the table.  “I have an idea, but I want opinions.” The room nodded. “It occurs to me that the Dowager Empress is the one causing all this stir.  If she, in her age-addled mind, wasn’t convinced that Anastasia was still alive and wasn’t offering this ridiculous reward for her, the people of Russia would be quite happy with Sokolov’s report, knowing that their oppressors where dead and gone.”  

The problem with Sokolov’s report, of course, was that he hadn’t found Anastasia’s body. 

“As it is, I believe the best way to put the rumors and interest to rest is by silencing Maria Feodorovna. This would eliminate the interest and the need for any more fake Anastasias.”

“It has the added bonus,” someone spoke up, “of eliminating her as a symbol of opposition.”  Again, there was general nodding and consensus. 

Gleb swallowed, trying to ignore the sudden taste of copper in his mouth.  It was the right course of action. Anastasia and her family were dead. It was a sacrifice that had needed to be made for Russia.  The girl’s family had done horrible things to his nation, his people. They needed to pay. And how could his comrades now take pleasure in the thought of one of that cursed family being alive?  The Romanovs’ executions had been a vital task in the war. No true Russian should feel shame over their deaths. And if the needs of the people dictated that Maria Feodorovna join her family in death then, for the good of Russia, it would be so.

“How?” Gleb asked, speaking for the first time.  “Our intel says she lives almost in isolation in Paris, that only her most trusted servants are allowed to see her, except on the rare occasions she attends the opera or ballet.  She keeps herself in the high style and comfort that should have died when her son did. She will not be easy to get to.”

Gorlinsky paused.  “There is a way, but if the plan is to succeed it will need to be kept quiet.  We cannot risk word of this getting back to the Dowager Empress and with the excitement this rumor has caused, the public would not like it.  I am certain their displeasure could be repressed, but it would be easier if we keep our movements covert.”

This was not a surprise to anyone in the room.

“In order to gain access to the Dowager Empress, someone must be sent to Paris with an imposter Anastasia.  They can train her to act, look, and speak the way Anastasia would have, so long as it is kept well away from any official government work, and when the Empress agrees to see her to test her varsity it will be the perfect opportunity for her trial.”

Everyone in the room knew that “trial” had been the word used during the Romanov family’s imprisonment to mean their execution.  And everyone knew Gorlinsky meant the same thing now. 

“We’ll need to find a girl. One who can be kept quiet but will be convincing enough to get us to Maria.”

Gleb didn’t hear the next few comments.  He couldn’t, his mind was too busy waging war with itself.  

The girl they would need would have to be beautiful, with brownish blond hair and a murky past.  They would have to be able to manipulate her, and a pair of wide, blue, beautiful Romanov eyes wouldn’t hurt.  He knew she was perfect. Hell, if he had been some simpleton inclined to believe every nonsense rumor he heard he might even be prepared to believe she could be the real Anastasia.  But he was not so innocent. His father had seen to that. 

And yet, part of him recoiled from the idea of using Anya.  He doubted she would thank him for it, and all of his instincts told him to do anything he could to keep her out of harm's way.  But he was not naive enough to believe that either he or Anya would have a choice. This was a revolution, and revolutions came with a price.  The Romanovs had paid it, his father had paid it, and now, Anya would have to pay it as well. 

For Russia, his beauty.  No choice but simple duty.  

Anya would pay, and Gleb would pay it right alongside her. 

“I know a girl we can use.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment to let me know what you think!
> 
> Or
> 
> Come say Hi to me on [Tumblr](http://wearesuchstuff1.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> I did a fair amount of research when writing this work, so most of my references are either to the musical itself or to history. If you're curious I highly recommend doing some research and falling down the history rabbit hole.  
> That being said, I am not an historian and most of my research was done on Wikipedia. I apologize if any of my facts are wrong. This is, of course, a work of fiction and I do not own the Broadway production (or any version) of Anastasia.


	2. In His Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "In his eyes I can see  
> Where my heart longs to be!  
> In his eyes I see a gentle glow,  
> And that's where I'll be safe, I know!  
> Safe in his arms, close to his heart...  
> But I don't know quite where to start...  
> By looking in his eyes,  
> Will I see beyond tomorrow?  
> By looking in his eyes,  
> Will I see beyond the sorrow  
> That I feel?"

The day had started clear and cold.  None of the six people who shared the room with her had snored too loudly and when she woke up she was met with the memory of dark, kind eyes.  

All in all, the day had started well.  Anya didn’t know what, exactly, had gone wrong. 

One minute she had been sweeping a layer of dirt off the street in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral, watching the Bolshevik Red Army march by, trampling a new layer of dirt into the cobblestones, and the next moment she was frozen, unable to breathe.  There was screaming, but she couldn’t tell from where, and the crowd that had gathered to watch the parade didn’t seem to notice. 

Was she the one screaming? 

She gripped the handle of her broom tightly, ignoring the bite of splinters as they burrowed into her skin. She needed to get out of there, but her legs wouldn’t respond.  Her head pounded and the crowd jostled her, pushing her this way and that as they closed in around her. She suddenly felt trapped, as if standing in a low cellar, surrounded by bodies.  The screaming was joined by a sharper, louder noise, the force of which made her shake and gasp.

Who was firing their gun? 

The soldiers marched past, blurring in her vision as tears filled her eyes.  The uniforms. Hidden by smoke. She could taste the tang of gunpowder. Feel it filling her lungs.  She couldn’t breathe. 

Why couldn’t she breathe? 

“Anya!”

The voice found her in her panic and suddenly there was a hand on her shoulder.  The touch may have been soft, but to Anya it felt like a death grip, and her skin screamed that a blade would follow.  She had just enough time to look up and register dark, kind eyes before she was running; away from the soldiers, away from the screams, and away from the eyes that somehow looked younger than her mind told her they should be.  

Her feet led her, unthinking, through the streets of St. Petersburg.  She came to a high gate, but it had been weathered and worn and broken and she slipped through the gaping bars without a thought.  She had no memory of ever having been in this place, but she had learned not to trust her memory. 

The huge building, distorted by the tears that still filled her eyes, towered before her, stretching out longer than a block. She kept running, certain that if she stopped her memories would catch up with her.  Suddenly that was the last thing she wanted. She threw herself towards the huge structure, ignoring the front entrance, the doors swinging open on their rusted hinges, and opted instead for a smaller side door, which offered no resistance when she slammed her shoulder into it.  

She tumbled into the building, sprinting through rooms and passageways that grew steadily larger the further in she went. Suddenly she burst into a huge hall.  The whole place looked like it had been ripped to shreds by many hundreds of hands, and Anya hadn’t taken five blind steps before she tumbled over a discarded piece of debris laying on the floor.  She crumpled, catching herself on her hands and knees, then sank the rest of the way to the floor, curling in on herself.

Her sobs filled and echoed in the empty hall.  She could feel the presence of her memories circling her and she pressed her face into the damp, scuffed wood of the floors, trying to shut them out.  She shuddered on the ground, gasping for air, but they were shadowy figures in her mind and would not be escaped. 

Her breath was coming faster and faster now, running away from her like a train she couldn’t catch.  She could smell the smoke again, filling her burning lungs, making her stomach churn, and she thought for a moment she might be sick.

Her vision began to turn black.  The entire world was spinning and she knew she would have fallen if she hadn't already been on the floor.

At the center of it all was an overwhelming terror.  She was more afraid than she could ever remember being in her life.  And yet, she had a horrible thought that this fear was merely an echo, left over from something much worse.  Digging her fingernails into her palms, wishing for any relief that pain could bring, Anya fought back a scream she didn’t have the breath for anyway as the shadows descended, threatening to pull her under with them.  

She was going to pass out.

She couldn’t breathe.  She couldn’t think. She couldn’t remember.      

“Anya?”

The voice was far away.  Anya curled her shaking body tighter in on itself, paying the shadows would pass and the voices would leave her be.

“Anya.”

The voice again, closer this time.  All Anya could do was whimper.

“Anya, listen to me.”

The voices had never been clear enough to understand.  And when had the voices started calling her Anya? 

“I need you to breathe.”

She struggled to comprehend what the commanding, if worried, voice asked, but her body was still so gripped by panic that even slowing her breath by a heartbeat seemed a fight.

“That’s it.  Easy Anya, just breathe.  Дыхание.” 

She concentrated every ounce of herself on obeying the soothing voice.  

 _In and out._  

With each breath the shadows retreated, the screams quieted, and Anya seemed to come back to herself a little more.

“Good,” the voice murmured low.  “You’re safe. I promise.”

 _Safe._  She wondered for a moment if she had ever really known safety.  She pushed the thought away and concentrated on the voice.

“Anya, can you look at me?”

It seemed the hardest request yet, but she forced herself back to reality.  When her eyes blinked open they were met by a pair that were dark and very worried, but still kind.

“Gleb.”

He was on his knees next to her, leaning over her with a hand hovering near her shoulder, as if he wanted to comfort her but was afraid to touch her.  His gaze was a mix of concern and fear, and it drew her next words out of her before she had time to think.

“I don’t know if I want to remember.”  Her voice broke and another sob escaped her.  Then Gleb’s hand was in her hair, stroking it gently as he hushed her and murmured comforts she only half heard.  He let her cry for a little while, and when her tears stopped he sat back on his heels, allowing her space to push herself off the floor.  

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, brushing a dirty sleeve across her face.  

Gleb fished in his pocket then drew out a small handkerchief, passing it to her.  “It’s alright.”

“How did you find me?” 

“I saw you at the parade.  You looked upset, but when I tried to talk to you, you ran.  I followed you here.” 

“That was you?”  Gleb nodded. “Oh.”  In Anya’s fear Gleb hadn’t quite looked like himself, somehow.  Or maybe he hadn't quite looked how she was expecting him to look. 

Glancing around, Anya began to truly take in her surroundings for the first time.  High arched windows lined one wall and statues peaked down from pedestals above. Mostly boarded, what little sunlight did make its way in illuminated the large hall.  In the dim light she could see that not much was left of what once must have been a grand space. The floors had been ripped up, the furniture and decorations there once were had been taken long ago by unhallowed hands.  The few empty frames that remained hanging on the walls still had bits of canvas peeking out from where their occupants had been unceremoniously cut from them, and even some of the floorboards had been ripped away to be used – Anya could only assume – as firewood for the desperately cold and poor.

At the other end of the room was the entrance to the skeleton of a grand staircase.  Parts of its banister and many of the steps themselves no longer remained, to the extent that even if Anya had wanted to test the frame with her light weight she wouldn’t have been able to.  But its grandeur was still apparent. Anya could almost see men in uniforms and women in elegant gowns sweeping down the steps, passed the pillars that, despite the dust, were clearly marble, and into the hall in which they now sat.  The staircase wrapped around and disappeared out of sight, leading, Anya could only assume, to the room directly above them. Even in the dim light she could see shapes painted lavishly on the walls and here and there the glint of gold leaf.  

“What is this place?” Anya asked, unable to keep a note of awe out of her voice and the sight of not only what this room had become, but what it had once clearly been.

Gleb gave her a questioning glance.  “It’s the Winter Palace,” he told her.  “It’s where the Romanovs lived when they stayed in Leningrad.  Or did, until Russia was freed from their oppression.” He paused for a moment then, watching her closely, Gleb added, “Including the youngest daughter; Anastasia.”               

Anya nodded distractedly, her gaze still wandering around the enormous room.  She had never been in a room this large. 

“What do you know of The Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov?”

Anya turned her attention back to Gleb, her brow furrowing.  “Not much,” she admitted. “Her father was deposed for the good of Russia,” she recited.  “The whole family was killed. Although,” she added after a moment, “people are saying Anastasia actually escaped.”

“Where did you hear that?”

Anya hesitated. “Around,” she shrugged, suddenly acutely aware of the uniform and rank Gleb wore. 

Gleb nodded, not seeming too interested in where she had heard the rumor. “She is dead, Anya. Anastasia and the rest of her family. You believe that, right?”  

“Of course.”

“Because it’s important that you believe that. That we all believe it. Those men who carried out the orders, who put Russia’s needs above all else, they’re heroes. And trust me, Anya, when the job was done there were no survivors.”

It surprised Anya, the intensity with which Gleb spoke. “Why are you telling me this Gleb?” She asked quietly. 

Gleb looked away for a moment. He seemed unsure, as if he couldn’t meet her eyes. But then the moment was gone, and all uncertainty was blinked away.  There was only resolve left on his face. 

“Russia needs your help, Anya.  This rumor comes from the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, but it is harming Russia.  The people need to be sure of their freedom from the tsars and all their descendants. Nothing can threaten the people’s government.”  

“But if the empress believes it,” Anya said slowly, thinking, “can she really be faulted for saying it, even though she is wrong?”  

A flicker of confusion crossed Gleb’s face, then he ran a hand quickly through his hair. “No, of course not, the problem is that people are believing her. And people, our comrades, are trying to rise above their place in the new order by presenting the empress with fake Anastasias, hoping to win the dowager's reward.”  

“That’s terrible,” Anya interjected. “The poor woman.”

Gleb gave her a look of surprise, as if this was the first time he had thought of it. “Well, yes, I suppose it must be difficult for her.  But it’s not good for us, either.”

Anya nodded slowly. “Of course. But it must be so hard for her to have her whole family killed and then to have hope only for each new person to rip it away.”  

“Well, we want to put an end to it. For her sake and for ours. But we need your help.”  

“My help?” Anya repeated, shocked. 

“Yes.  You see, Anya, we want to prove to Maria, and to Russia, once and for all, that her family is dead.”

“And how can I help with that?”

Gleb’s gaze was intense.  “Anya, the People’s Government wants me to teach you to be Anastasia Romanov.”

“What?” Anya demanded, pulling away from him.  “Why?”

“Because, Anya,” Gleb pursued, his eyes burning, “we need the world to know that it isn’t possible for Anastasia to still be alive.  And what better way to do that than to present them with the perfect candidate. You’re about the right age, you have the Romanov eyes, and, Anya, you don’t remember your childhood.  If we train you to act and talk and behave like her and you’re not Anastasia, who would be?”

Anya shook her head.  “But I’m not Anastasia!”

“Exactly!”  Gleb seemed eager now.  “And the Dowager Empress will know that.  And then, so will Russia. There is no more Anastasia and there never will be.  Look, Anya, our government is behind us. We will have the support of the Bolsheviks, your ruble share will be doubled, and you will have the thanks of a grateful nation.  And besides, the Dowager Empress lives in Paris, and you told me before you felt like you had family waiting there. After you see the Empress maybe we can find your real family, too.”  Gleb paused. “But I have to warn you, this assignment is classified. We aren’t even allowed to speak about it at headquarters. If word of this gets out, the Cheka will know it was you.  And I won’t be able to protect you.” Anya could hear the seriousness in Gleb’s voice, and under it, she could swear, a note of fear.

“I won’t tell anyone, Gleb.”  She gave a small smile. “Who would I have to tell?”  Then her brows came down again. “But still, it doesn't seem very kind to the empress.”

Gleb waved a hand through the air, brushing off the concern.  “We won’t tell her you are Anastasia.  And besides, isn’t it better to help her see the truth than to let her heart be crushed by every next imposter?”

Anya considered Gleb’s words.  “I suppose so…” she admitted slowly.  What else did she have? Anya thought.  She could barely afford bread and potatoes with her current job, and Gleb was the first person to be kind to her in Petersburg.  She had trusted him with her secret and in turn he had comforted her, not once but twice. She could still feel how he had run his hands through her hair, soothing away the panic and tears.  

Besides, she could practically hear a voice whispering they would meet her in Paris.  How could she not go if it meant having a chance to find out who she really was?

“Alright, I’ll do it.” she agreed.  The smile Gleb gave her made something flip in her chest.  An odd sensation, but she decided to herself that she wouldn’t mind feeling it again.  

“Good!  We will have to work fast.  The Bolsheviks want this done and over with.  We will have what resources we need, but we cannot be tied to the republic.  We will have to find a place to meet.”

“What about here?” Anya asked, looking around the dim hall.

“Here?” Gleb echoed.

“What not?” A smile began to slide across Anya’s face.  “If I’m going to learn to be Anastasia, what better place to learn than in the Winter Palace?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment to let me know what you think!
> 
> Or
> 
> Come say Hi to me on [Tumblr](http://wearesuchstuff1.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> I did a fair amount of research when writing this work, so most of my references are either to the musical itself or to history. If you're curious I highly recommend doing some research and falling down the history rabbit hole.  
> That being said, I am not an historian and most of my research was done on Wikipedia. I apologize if any of my facts are wrong. This is, of course, a work of fiction and I do not own the Broadway production (or any version) of Anastasia.


	3. Someone Else's Story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Long ago  
> In someone else's lifetime  
> Someone with my name  
> Who looked a lot like me  
> Came to know  
> A man and made a promise  
> He only had to say  
> And that's where she would be."

“What a ridiculous name!” Anya laughed loudly. 

Gleb stared at her, a bemused smile on his face. They had spent the first day together ripping down a few of the boards on the windows – allowing fresh air into the grand hall of the Winter Palace and illuminating the paintings on the ceilings of the hall and staircase – and trying to minimize some of the dust and wreckage. They had quickly lost themselves in the maze of rooms so ridiculous in size that Gleb would have laughed if it hadn’t made him so angry – and they hadn’t even ventured onto the second floor. Everywhere they looked they found hidden things. Paintings trapped behind fabric, gold gilt obscured by dust, the sparkle of chandeliers dulled in darkness. 

In the hall connected to the one Anya had run into they found discarded hospital beds and equipment, left from when the palace had been used as a hospital during the War. Gleb had suppressed a shudder at the sight. He had been too young, by a matter of months, to enlist – for which his mother had thanked God every day – but he had served his country in other ways. The Cheka had put him to work and he had seen what had been left of the men who were lucky enough to make it home. It surprised Gleb that all these supplies had been left, when people and hospitals alike were in need of beds and resources, but he was sure the Bolsheviks had their reasons, so he let the thought pass. 

In the end, they had decided to stick to the chamber Anya had first discovered. They pushed away the debris and found a table and a few chairs to bring into the room. They had stacked the documents, records, and books that Gleb had been allowed access to on the table. It was one of these books Gleb was referring to now.

“Who would name a horse a thing like that?” Anya asked, still giggling. The sight made Gleb warm.

“Anastasia, apparently,” Gleb chuckled.

“But what does it even mean?”

“Romeo? It the name of a character. From a play.” Gleb flipped a page, looking for more information. All it said was that the horse’s name was Romeo.

“But why would I need to know that?” Anya demanded, slinging her legs over the arm of the chare she was sitting in. The fabric had been taken off the seat, but Anya didn’t seem to care. “It’s not like the empress is going to ask me what Anastasia’s horse was named, is she?”

Gleb shrugged, keeping his face turned to his book. “Probably not, but maybe it tells you something about who she was?” 

“Like what?”

When Gleb did meet Anya’s eyes they were searching, but for what he wasn’t sure. “Like that she was a romantic.” 

The days past quickly, but Gleb found he enjoyed the hours he spent in the dusty monument to all that had been wrong with his country. More specifically, he enjoyed the hours he spent with Anya.

“I feel like such an идиот.”

Anya was practicing her ‘regal barring’. At least, that was what one of the books had called it. Head up, shoulders back, stand up tall, try to float. They had made a sort of game of it. The object was for her to walk on the floor without making it creak. Given the state of the floors, it was not an easy game.

“You do look a bit like a cat struggling to balance on fence,” Gleb admitted. 

Anya turned to him, putting on a mock expression of surprise. “Why thank you, kind sir.” With one fluid movement she swept into a curtsy, her patched skirts held gracefully in one hand. The movement took Gleb by surprise and for a moment all he could concentrate on was the way her hair swept away from her arched neck.

“Where did you learn that?” he demanded. “It was very good.”

Anya laughed, walking back across the room and pushing him goodnaturedly as she passed. “It was just a joke.”

Gleb smiled, but his eyes followed her even after she passed. The next time around the floor didn’t squeak once. 

Gleb stopped going to the squares of Leningrad to make speeches. He told himself it was because Anya had so much to learn in such a short amount of time. His comrades didn’t question – or rather weren’t allowed to question as those few that knew what he was really doing were under strict instructions not to talk about or acknowledge their plans in any way. But Gleb began to wonder if it was Anya’s eyes, and not the daunting piles of books and reports on the table, that drew him to the Winter Palace each morning.

“Who was her great grandmother?”

“Queen Victoria,” Anya shot back, pacing a little way away as Gleb quizzed her.

“Who was her great great grandmother?”

This answer took a moment longer, but after a small mental struggle Anya got it. “Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.” 

Gleb turned a page, searching for another question. “Look, Anya, here are some pictures.” He crossed to the girl and the two of them flipped through the pages together.

The first was of a stylish woman standing on a small flight of stairs. She was fairly dripping in expensive materials, jewels, and furs, and the feather on her hat was the largest Anya had ever seen. The caption read Princess Olga Valerianovna Paley. 

“This would have been Anastasia’s great aunt,” Gleb explained. He read a few more paragraphs then nodded, remembering. “She had an affair with one of Alexander the Second’s brothers and their,” he paused for a moment, searching for the right word, “um, _frolicking_ got her pregnant, so she divorced her first husband and married him instead.”

Anya’s slender fingers turned the next pages. “The Duke of Oldenburg...” she muttered quietly as she read. “Louise of Baden.... Count Sergei Yulyevich Witte.”

“I saw him once,” Gleb laughed quietly. “He was in a parade. He wore this dreadfully stupid feathered hat.”

Anya laughed too. “He does seem the type,” she agreed, looking again at the picture. “And I recall his yellow cat.” 

Gleb glanced at Anya in confusion then skimmed the page again. “I don’t see anything about a cat here.”

“Really?” Anya asked, frowning. “I could have sworn...” then she shrugged. “I must have seen a picture in another book.”

The weather began to change. Gleb missed the trams that had run across the frozen Neva river in his childhood, but he always looked forward to spring, and the now-open windows of their hall looked directly out over the Neva, affording them a lovely view. He could understand why the rulers of old had chosen to build their palace here.

It was over these days that Gleb began to realize something. No matter how early he came or late he stayed, Anya was always in the palace when he arrived and left. When he found a few blankets tucked into a corner by the staircase and asked Anya if she was sleeping there she just shrugged and told him, with a note of confusion in her voice, that she felt more comfortable in the palace that she ever had in her shared flat. 

The table screeched as Gleb and Anya pushed it out of the center of the room.

“You’re sure about this?” Anya asked, trepidation in her voice.

“Sure, it’ll be fun,” Gleb insisted, ignoring the slight turn in his stomach. “My mother taught me how to dance growing up. Traditional dances mostly, of course, but she picked up a few European ones.”

“We don’t have any music,” Anya pointed out. “And I only have the one set of skirts. If I rip out the hem...” 

Gleb chuckled at the thought of her managing to rip out a hem that only reached half way down her calves. “You’ll be fine. And we don’t need music. Besides, you have to get the step first. Come here.” He motioned her over to him and she obeyed with only slight trepidation on her face. “Closer,” he encouraged, stepping towards her so they were almost toe to toe. He could hear her breath catch and when she looked up at him her eyes were so blue he thought for a moment he might drown in them.

“Good. Now, left hand on my shoulder, and right like so.” He grasped her small right hand in his large one, holding it firmly. Her left hand found his shoulder and he wrapped his free arm around her thin waist, pulling her just a little closer to him. He could feel the rise and fall of her breath against his palm, and for a moment all he wanted to do was hold her close. But his comrades were growing impatient and the sooner they acted the better for Russia. So instead he said quietly, “now step forward on your right food,” and they were off. Soon they were traveling across the floor, if not gracefully, at least in time with each other.

Anya giggled, looking up at him, and Gleb had to concentrate extra hard on what his feet were doing for a moment to keep himself from stumbling at the sight of her. He tightened his grip slightly around her hand and allowed himself just a moment to wish that this, all of this, didn’t have to end.

When he thought she was ready Gleb began to hum. Quietly at first, just enough for her to get the feeling of keeping in time with the music. Although the dance was a waltz he didn’t know any waltzing songs, so he settled on a patriotic tune, one the he could sing without thinking and one that would allow Anya a chance to see how the step adapted to different music. 

Anya smiled up at him, each step easier than the next, and soon the grace of her natural movements shone through. Almost without thinking Gleb added the words. It was a song he had heard his father sing to him before he died. It had spread across Russia as quickly as the revolution had and with the sun shining outside, sparkling on the Neva river, it only seemed appropriate. 

_“The Neva flows, a new wind blows, and soon it will be spring...”_

The words came easily to his tong. He had always loved to sing. His notes were clear and pure and although he sung quietly Anya looked up in surprise. He smiled at her, putting a small amount of pressure on her back to steer her into an easy spin, then pulling her back safely to him.

_“The leaves unfold, the Ts-”_

He was cut off by Anya’s sharp intake of breath. A shudder went through her and her eyes flashed. She pulled her hand away from his, holding it to her chest as if to protect herself.

“Anya?”

Gleb kept his hand at the small of her back, keeping her close and steady. After a beat, her eyes refocused on him and she blinked.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed. She was close enough that he could feel the puff of air on his neck. “I just... I know that song.”

Gleb nodded. “Yes. I told you, it’s very famous.”

“No,” Anya shook her head, a strand of hair falling into her face. “I mean, I know if from... before.”

“You remember?” Gleb asked eagerly.

Anya dropped her gaze. “No, not like that. I just know what comes next is all.” It wasn’t until she said it that Gleb actually thought about what the next lyric was going to be.

There was one major thing Gleb found he didn’t like about the time he spent with Anya. Through the course of their research and lessons, the Tsar and his family had begun to take shape in Gleb’s mind, not just as symbols of oppression, but as thinking, feeling people. 

Olga, the eldest, had joined her sisters and mother as a nurse during the War and had wanted to marry a Russian man, not a foreign dignitary. She and Tatiana had cried and had nightmares after the government minister had been assassinated in front of them and Tatiana had once fallen in love with a wounded soldier under her care. Maria had enjoyed flirtations with soldiers and had hoped to be married with a big family one day. That day, of course, never came. 

There was also Alexei. With Anya, Gleb had learned of the boy’s illness, of his brush with death in the Białowieża Forest, and that he often had been so ill the boy could not walk. He had been the baby of the family, and when he had been ill his mother had turned to any source she could – be it doctor, God, or mystic – for help, just as any other mother would. 

But, despite all this, it was Anastasia who intrigued Gleb most of all. She had been wild and lively, full of wit and mischief. She had shared her room and slept on a hard cot even before her family had been removed from power, and she had eaten chocolates at the opera with her white gloves on. The description of the girl couldn’t have been more different that the meek young woman he had found huddling on the ground at the sound of a car backfiring. And yet, as Anya learned more and began to embody the young princess, Gleb began to see sparks in her of the confidence and happiness the real Anastasia might once have possessed. 

It made him uncomfortable to think of them this way. Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna had not just been another mother, her daughters not simply young women looking with excitement towards their futures, and her son not only a sick boy but also the next oppressor of Russia. For this they had paid the necessary price, and yet they had also been human. It seemed that Gleb had forgotten this for a time. 

“Umm, Gleb? We might have a problem.”

Gleb glanced up at Anya, whose eyes were glued to a book. “What?”

“This says Anastasia spoke French, among other languages.” 

Gleb shrugged. Hadn’t Russian been good enough? “So?”

Anya finally looked at him. “So we’re going to be in Paris. Don’t you think someone will expect me to speak French?”

“Блядь!” Gleb swore, making Anya jump. He hadn’t thought of that. “Now what?”

“Can’t you teach me?”

“Me? I don’t speak French. French was only used by the Tsars and people at court because they thought it made them better than the common people. Why would I want to speak French?”

“Maybe in case you ever wanted to go to Paris?” Anya teased. She strained in her chair and leaned down to begin relacing one of her boots which had come untied. “Come on, you must know something.”

“Bonjour,” Gleb admitted with an annoyed shrug as his tongue tangled up the foreign word. “Merci.” He pronounced it ‘messy’. 

Easily, without looking up from her boot, Anya responded. “Très bon. On voit, c'est facile.” It was only after the words slipped from her mouth that her fingers froze.

Gleb straitened with curiosity and an unexplainable feeling of trepidation. “You speak French?”

“Oui, un peu,” she answered slowly, not seeming to know where the words came from.

Doing his best to shrug it off, Gleb laughed, “It’s a good thing, too.”

The smile Anya shot him in return was full of confusion and just a little bit of fear.

That evening, after Gleb had said his goodnights, Anya still sat at their table, pouring over a book. Just as he was leaving her heard Anya’s quiet voice, reading allowed to herself. “Anastasia Romanov was born in Peterhof, a palace by the sea.” 

The next words were so quiet Gleb almost didn’t hear them and as soon as he did he wished he hadn't. 

“Could it be?”

 

**********

 

Gleb was late.

It was not entirely unusual, Anya admitted to herself, but today she was restless. She and Gleb spent all day digging though the lives of people who had been murdered for living in the very halls Anya now found herself in. The palace seemed to call her. She had seen very little of it, really, and there was so much to explore. 

Without much thought, Anya began wandering. 

Her curiosity brought her down corridors and into rooms she hadn’t seen before. She found dining rooms, drawing rooms, and a room paneled in wood that looked like it had once contained hundreds of books. Finally, a small, plain door inside a suite of rooms lead her into a bedroom. Twin beds stood on either side of the room – more like cots, really. No blankets or pillows, although Anya assumed those would have been taken long ago. One nightstand remained, and Anya could only guess that the small pile of splintered and rotting word next to the other bed was its counterpart. The rest of the room had been pillaged, but even so it didn’t seem overly large or glamorous. It felt like a servant's room, really, with the two beds and once-whitewashed walls. But the location didn’t seem right to be for servants. It was too central, too close to the library and the rooms Anya had decided must have been the Tsar and Tsarina’s living quarters. 

Absently, Anya crossed to one of the beds and sat down on the bare cot. From this perspective, her eyes came to rest on a plane piece of wall opposite her. 

_There should be a cross there._

The thought surprised her. The wall didn’t seem different than any other section of wall in the room, but something inside her whispered with certainty that there ought to have been a crucifix hanging in that spot.

The light laughter of children echoed through the room, or perhaps through Anya’s mind. She found she couldn’t quite be sure anymore, but either way the sound frightened her. She sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, onto the floor, and as she did so her eyes came to rest once again on the nightstand. She reached out, giving the single drawer a firm tug. It didn’t move. Water must have gotten in and expanded the wood, wedging it tight. She gave the handle another try, which was accompanied by a loud groan of protest. This time when she let go she could hear something inside rattle. 

Getting up, Anya knelt to be on the nightstand’s level. With the determination of inquisitiveness, Anya began wiggling and pulling the drawer this way and that until suddenly, with a screech, the unit gave way and Anya was left holding the shallow box. 

Inside lay a small, green egg. Perhaps the size of her fist and decorated lavishly with gold enamel, the egg lay on its side, winking up at her with a brightness Anya hadn’t seen before within the dusty palace. Her hands had just closed around the treasure when she heard a voice calling.

“Anya!”

Quickly Anya placed the dislodged drawer on the cot and ran out of the room – shoving the egg into her pocket as she went – to find Gleb. 

“Anya?”

“I’m here!” She called as she tripped lightly into the Neva enfilade. 

“What happened?” Gleb demanded as she rounded a corner and he came into sight. 

Anya was surprised by the fear in his voice. “Nothing,” she assured him. “I just went exploring.”

Gleb let out a breath. “You scared me. I thought-” Gleb cut himself off, then shook his head, rubbing the braiding on his uniform’s sleeve distractedly. “Never mind.”

“I’m fine, Gleb,” Anya cajoled. “I just went for a walk. Look what I found.” 

She drew the egg out of her pocket and held it up for Gleb to see. In the light from the windows it sparkled and shone, taking Anya’s breath away.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked, passing it to Gleb, who examined it. 

“It looks like it opens,” he muttered, prying at it, trying to force the lid. 

Quickly Anya pulled it back from him. “Don’t hurt it!” She examined it again, turning it over to look at its base. On the bottom, she saw a sort of winding key. 

_Music box._

The word entered her mind unbidden but would not leave. It was so strong that when the key clicked into place and the lid popped open – filling the air with light, tinkling music – Anya did gasp, but in delight, not surprise.

“How did you do that?” questioned Gleb, but Anya hardly heard him.

Music swelled around her, and she could sense the shadows it would bring, but for the first time since she could remember the prospect didn’t frighten her. She knew the music, each note presenting itself in her mind just a moment before her ears heard it. Then, suddenly, there were words. They came spilling out of her, sung in a voice that was not quite her own.

_“Dancing bears,_  
painted wings,  
things I almost remember.  
And a song someone sings  
once upon a December.” 

Anya closed her eyes against the shadows and as they pressed in on her they began to take shape. 

Horses, pulling a sleigh, pawing and prancing.

Snow whipping her cheeks.

Then, all at once, dancers. Dipping and twirling around the Winter Palace halls, not as she saw them now, but as they looked when she imagined what they must have once been.

Dresses, jewels, and light dazzling her. Turning and laughing and suddenly she had a partner. He stood tall, but his face was in shadow. 

Why couldn’t she make it out?

Someone singing. It was no longer her voice, but she heard it just the same.

_Far away, long ago,_  
Glowing dim as an ember,  
Things my heart  
Used to know,  
Things it yearns to remember... 

She was spinning. And spinning and spinning and spinning.

_And a song_  
Someone sings  
Once upon a December. 

All at once the world melted away, taking her with it, and she was aware of only one thing. Someone held her, safe and warm.

 

**********

 

Gleb caught Anya when her knees buckled. He sank to the ground with her in his arms, holding her safe against his chest as her head fell back onto his shoulder. She had been singing, eerily – impossibly – in time with the music, then something had seemed to come over her and, after a moment, she simply collapsed. 

Gleb’s voice was hoarse when he said her name, shaking her slightly. She remained limp for an instant, then, without warning, her eyes flashed open and she sucked in a breath. She struggled against him for a moment, disoriented, but he held her tight, murmuring into her ear.

“Easy, Anya, easy. I’ve got you. You’re alright.”

She stilled almost immediately. “Gleb. What happened?”

Only when he was sure she could support herself did Gleb let her go. “I don’t know,” he told her. “One minute you were singing, then,” he gestured helplessly.

She sat facing him, her eyes wide, but, he thought, more with wonder than with fear. “The music box,” she whispered. “I knew the words.” Her eyes found his. “How could I know the words?”

He shook his head, unable to answer the question. No, not unable. Unwilling. An answer had presented itself, creeping into his consciousness over the days and weeks he and Anya had spent together. But it was impossible.

Not just impossible. It was treason even to think it. 

“Gleb,” Anya pursued, “how could I know the words? How could I know about the cat or how to speak French or any of it if I wasn’t-”

“Don’t.” Gleb’s voice was more forceful than he had intended, but he found himself shaking. He pushed himself to his feet and Anya followed. 

“Be very careful what you say, Anya. All these lessons, the rumors that prevail. You’re confused, it’s only natural, but you cannot think this.”

“But-”

“No, Anya,” he cut her off. “I know. I lived the truth behind the tale. Believe me, no one got away.”

At his words an expression of horror began to seep into Anya’s eyes. “What?” 

Gleb’s heart was cold. “My father was a guard at the Ipatiev House. His name was Stepan Vaganov and he was there when Yurovsky read the order and when the Tsar and all his family were shot. He pulled the trigger, Anya.”

He hadn’t told her. He had kept it a secret from her, and until the words came tumbling out of his mouth he hadn’t been sure why. He had no reason for shame. What his father had done he did for Russia. There was no greater cause. But he realized now, as Anya started at him in shock, that he had been afraid that if he told her, Anya – kind Anya, companionate Anya, who pitied the Dowager Empress and who had spoken of a family murdered, not of a country freed – would hate him.

And yet, she had no right to. She should thank him for what his family sacrificed. And if her terror kept her silent, well then it would keep her safe. 

“My father left on the night they met their fate, his pistol by his side.” Anya took a small step back and Gleb did his best to push away the pain her fear caused him. “I heard the shots, I heard the screams. But it’s the silence after I remember the most.”

He could still hear it, the way the world had stopped breathing. He had been a frightened child, even during the war, but that night he realized that the course of a nation could be changed by one man. The Neva would still flow, spring would still come, but the world would never be the same. 

Anya’s face was pale. “Did your father kill them?” she whispered, the music boxed clutched in her hand. 

Gleb nodded. “When he got home he shook his head and told me not to ask. My mother said he died of shame. He didn’t, of course. He was killed a few months later while working with the Cheka, but I think my mother wished the guilt had killed him. She couldn’t understand, but I believe he did a proud and vital task.”

Anya looked up at him with those blue, Romanov eyes, and Gleb pushed away all uncertainty. It couldn’t be her. He wouldn’t _let_ it be her. He had heard Anastasia die and for the good of Russia and for Anya’s own safety she would stay dead if he had to kill her himself.

But Anya’s eyes had lost their fear and now held only sadness. “Would you have pulled the trigger,” she asked, her voice quiet, “if you’d been told?” 

Her words stopped him. He couldn’t imagine – didn’t dare think...

“This dream won’t bring you family, and it won’t bring you the truth. All it will bring are lies and pain, and I won’t be able to stop it. A revolution is a simple thing. It must be protected. If you really were who you are pretending to be they would kill you without hesitation.” He didn’t think he would be able to bare it if they did. “Do you understand Anya?”

“Yes, Gleb.” She nodded but didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know – about your father, I mean. I just -” She finally looked up at him, “If I’m not her, I don’t know who else to be.” Her voice broke and melted his heart just as spring had the Neva. 

“Hey,” he murmured, reaching out and brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’ll remember. I’ll help you, I promise.”

Yes, that was it. Anya would remember and then all would be well. With Maria Feodorovna dead the Anastasia rumor would be put to rest, and then, perhaps, he and Anya would become something else. Something more.

Anya gave him a small smile in agreement. “Remember what you told me?” Gleb pursued. “You told me you had faith. That you knew it all would come back one day. And it will.” 

 

**********

 

When Gleb got back to his office, Gorlinsky was waiting for him.

Before he had left the Winter Palace he had made Anya promise to eat something other than potatoes, bread, and water. He had tried to ignore the new flicker in her eyes that he saw when she looked at him, knowing that the revelation about his father had shocked her and telling himself it would pass with time. Yet, he knew that, in some way, through all the time spent with the royal family – their histories, writings, and memories, at least – Anya had come to care for the Romanovs. And, though the thought left a bitter taste in his mouth, Gleb knew that, in a way, he had too. 

Which made the sight of Gorlinsky leaning on his desk waiting for him somewhat unsettling. 

“Comrade,” Gorlinsky said with a smile. Gleb returned the greeting. 

“How is your project coming along?”

“Well,” nodded Gleb. He was surprised the general brought it up at all. They were under strict instructions not to mention it. Of course, Gorlinsky had issued those instructions.

The news seemed to please his comrade. “Good, I’m glad to hear it. You’ll be ready for the train then.”

Gleb furrowed his brow in confusion. “What train?”

“The last train out of Leningrad,” Gorlinsky explained. “It leaves in two days. You and the girl have tickets booked on it.” 

“Two days? But that’s not nearly enough time!”

Gorlinsky raised an eyebrow. “It’s going to have to be. You’ve had plenty of time. Besides, all the girl has to do is get you close enough to the Empress to make the shot.”

“There’s too much to learn,” Gleb protested. “She needs to be able to recite the facts, but she also needs to look like her and walk and talk like her.” 

Gleb wasn’t sure why he was trying to delay this. He knew it would have to come. Maybe it was what had happened earlier that day at the palace. But more likely, he admitted, he just didn’t want his time with Anya to end. He knew it would. Despite the moment of fantasy he had allowed himself that morning, he knew – he had made her an accomplice. She would never forgive him for what he was going to Paris to do. 

“You’ve had too much time already,” Gorlinsky snapped. “Finish this, Gleb. Show the world you are your father’s son. Finish the job he started.”

This was for Russia. It was what he had fought for, what his father had killed for. And his mother’s shame and Anya’s fear were just two more casualties in their war. 

“Yes. We’ll be ready.”

Gorlinsky smiled, but for the first time Gleb saw the sinister meanings beneath. “Good. Because I would hate to think there is a girl running around Leningrad somewhere, thinking that she could be the real Anastasia. Such a person could not be a loyal Russian. And that would mean she would have to be taken care of.”

Gleb’s heart squeezed. “She is a good and loyal Russian.”

With a sneer Gorlinsky stepped to the door of the office. He stopped with his hand on the knob. “I’m afraid she’s going to have to prove it.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You both are.”

When the door closed behind him Gleb let out a breath. Despite being under Gorlinsky’s orders, he and Anya were now truly on their own. An envelope with two tickets and enough rubles to get them through the trip lay on the desktop, but that was all they assistance they were going to get. 

Gleb took a moment and let himself sink back into the comforting furry that had helped him hate the Romanovs for so long. They had destroyed his country, his people, and whatever spark of sympathy Anya had begun to light in him would be stamped out. They were dead. His father had seen to that. And soon, their grandmother would be as well. 

With decisive steps, Gelb crossed to the desk and opened the bottom drawer. From the back corner he drew out his father’s pistol and hefted it in his hands. 

_From each according to his ability._

This was in his blood. It was no more and no less than what he was born to do.

_To each according to Russia’s needs._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment to let me know what you think!
> 
> Or
> 
> Come say Hi to me on [Tumblr](http://wearesuchstuff1.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> I did a fair amount of research when writing this work, so most of my references are either to the musical itself or to history. If you're curious I highly recommend doing some research and falling down the history rabbit hole.  
> That being said, I am not an historian and most of my research was done on Wikipedia. I apologize if any of my facts are wrong. This is, of course, a work of fiction and I do not own the Broadway production (or any version) of Anastasia.


	4. Heaven Help My Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Did I know where he'd lead me to?  
> Did I plan  
> Doing all of this for the love of a man?  
> Well I let it happen anyhow  
> And what I'm feeling now  
> Has no easy explanation  
> Reason plays no part  
> Heaven help my heart"

The rocking of the train was a new sensation to Anya. When they had first started she didn’t think she would ever get used to it, but now, almost half a day into their journey, she was beginning to find it comforting. 

She sat close to Gleb, her small bag, containing a blanket, some food, and a mysterious music box, sitting on her lap. She did her best not to focus on the way his body heat warmed her side or the way his leg rested up against hers, and she tried not to dwell on the memories of dancing in his arms, the way he held her close, or the way he had comforted her when her fear became unmanageable. She was sure those moments – while they meant to world to her – were nothing to him. 

The memory of Gleb’s face when he had told her of his father haunted her. He had been pained, afraid, even, and yet not at the idea of his father murdering innocent children. Anya shuddered at the thought of what must have happened that night, the horrors that poor family must have experienced before their lives were so cruelly cut short. His father had been there. He had been one of the men to kill them. And Gleb... Gleb was his father’s son.

And yet, Anya knew Gleb to be kind, compassionate, and thoughtful. He loved Russia, and its people, and Anya couldn’t help but believe that what he did he did because he truly wanted the best for them. Despite everything, Anya couldn’t help but feel safer sitting next to him. Despite everything, Anya trusted him. And, despite everything, she thought, deep down, she might feel something more than just trust for the man who had saved her from her own mind. 

The car was small and space was cramped, but Anya couldn’t fight down her excitement. Gleb had told her that most of the people on the train were intellectuals and nobles, and Anya couldn’t stop the feeling that the train was speeding her towards answers. They would reach Paris, where a voice whispered they would meet her, and they would go from there. 

They whiled away the time watching their country speed by and talking of small things. They dared not review any of the lessons Anya had learned. If anyone suspected her of having even a passing interest in the Romanovs, let alone being able to present herself has a possible version of the youngest Romanov daughter, the Cheka would put her to death. Gleb had made that very clear.

And yet, she couldn’t help but feel that she was never more herself than when she was learning to be the princess. 

They were perhaps an hour or so from the border of Russia when the train began to slow. Anya looked around in confusion, noting that several other passengers were doing the same. They couldn’t be near Minks yet. Judging by what she saw out of the train windows they weren’t really near anything.

“We’re stopping,” Gleb muttered, seemingly to himself. He half stood in his seat and looked around, but it wasn’t until he sat back down and Anya saw fear in his eyes that she became frightened herself. “We’re being boarded,” he informed her, his voice low.

Anya’s breath caught. To her surprise, the warmth of Gleb’s hand found her own and held it tight.

The train ground to a halt and for a few moments the entire car sat in silence. Their car was third to last, with only one other passenger carriage between them and the luggage car. Everyone sat in silence as they listened to the Red Army Cheka board the train and search the first car. 

“What are they looking for?” Anya whispered.

Gleb shook his head. “I don’t know. But we’re alright,” he promised her. “We haven’t done anything wrong.” 

Anya glanced up at Gleb. “Then why do you look frightened?”

Even if Gleb had been willing or able to answer he was cut short by the sound of the door to their carriage being opened. 

“Документы!” a guard barked. 

There was a general rustling as everyone in the car began pulling out their papers. 

Gleb had left his Red Army uniform behind in St. Petersburg and now wore civilian clothes. From his small case he pulled out an envelope containing their papers, passing Anya hers. 

The guards hardly glanced at them. Their papers were in order and the men continued on, but a moment later there was a commotion from the next car.

The door opened, and two soldiers led – or practically dragged – a man into the carriage between them. He wore a blue coat and a red vest and had shaggy, untrimmed hair and a beard. He was uttering a near constant string of explanations, pleas, and apologies, but the guards ignored him. As he passed through the car it seemed to Anya that his eyes landed on her for a moment, and that when they did they widened in surprise. But before she could even think about why he had been dragged through the opposite door. 

Near them one soldier reported to his comrade, “He’s not the Count. Says his name is Vlad. Probably a lie.” The other man chuckled. “He has the wrong colored papers though. They’ll probably just shoot him when they get him off the train.” 

The men might have said more but Anya was already running. She heard Gleb shout her name, but she was through the door into the next car. There were no guards left here, thankfully, but several people stared at her as she raced by towards the luggage carriage. 

The door was open in the last carriage, and the one Cheka who remained in the caboose could only manage a startled “Hey!” before Anya was throwing herself out of the train. The man – Vlad – was on the ground, cowering in front of a soldier whose pistol was already aimed at his head.

“No!” Anya’s shout startled the guard, who turned to find the source of the noise. Continuing to trust her instinct, Anya darted forward, placing herself in front of the man and directly into the line of fire. 

“Stop!” she commanded, her voice ringing out loud and strong.

For half a moment the two guards simply stared at her, dumbfounded, then another commotion announced the arrival of Gleb, followed by two more soldiers. He burst out of the train but stopped dead when he saw Anya standing in front of the gun. 

“Anya, don’t.” Gleb’s voice was horse and he took a half step forward, but the click of the soldier disengaging the safety from his pistol seemed to stop Gleb in his tracks. 

Somehow, this didn’t strike Anya as the first time she had stared down the barrel of a gun. “You can’t kill him,” Anya protested, speaking quickly, not knowing how much time they would give her before they simply decided to shoot her. “Please, you can’t. He hadn’t done anything wrong.”

“He’s got the wrong papers,” one of the other soldiers interjected.

“That’s not a reason to kill him!” Anya protested. “Maybe his papers are old! Maybe he’s been waiting on this train for months! You can’t just kill him!”

“We can and we will,” snapped the man in front of her. “So I suggest you get out of the way before I decide you are impeding the Red Army and shoot you as well as the traitor.”

Anya could feel her breath begin to come faster. The shadowy figures began to press their hands against the locked doors of her memory, but she pushed them away. She couldn’t. Not now. 

Gleb took another step forward. “Comrade, please. The girl means no harm. She is upset. She would never stand in the way of justice for Russia.” He hesitated. “But is it truly necessary to kill this man? Without so much as a hearing?”

The soldier pointing the gun curled his lip at Gleb’s words, but his eyes never left Anya’s. “I care nothing for the justice of Russia, _comrade_ ,” he sneered. “But if this сука doesn’t get out of my way I will kill the man with a bullet through her head.”

Anya could hear shots. She could hear screams. She prayed they weren’t hers. 

Though her vision was blurred Anya saw Gleb reach into his inner jacket pocket. His words, “I can’t let you do that,” seemed to make no sense. She was going to die. How was he going to stop them? 

No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than a new voice rang out. “Bart, stop.”

All faces turned to the new speaker. The general stood at the train door, looking down at them with an air of disinterested authority. “We found Count Ipolitov. We don’t need to make any more of a scene.”

“But sir,” Bart protested, his gun still poised in the air, “This man has the wrong papers. He’s clearly-”

“He’s clearly not our concern,” the general cut him off. “We are here for Ipolitov. Not to murder young girls. You three, back on the train. Now.” His last words were directed at Anya, Gleb, and Vlad, but for a moment Anya didn’t seem to be able to recognize them as Russian. Then there was a hand around her arm and another at her back and Vlad and Gleb were leading her back onto the train. Gleb said something to the general, then helped Anya step up into the baggage carriage. She stood there, dazed, as Gleb and Vlad climbed in after her. 

“Anya? Anya, look at me.” Gleb’s hands were on her cheeks and he tilted her face to his. “You’re alright, Anya. You’re safe.”

“What’s the matter with her?” That was Vlad’s voice.

“She’s in shock,” Gleb snapped. “She did just almost get herself killed for you.”

While Anya heard the words, they seemed far away. This was not the first time she had seen a Cheka soldier point a gun at her, she was sure of it. But Gleb’s voice was insistent, worried, and she struggled to focus on him. She didn’t like when he was upset.

“I’m sorry, Gleb,” she whispered, her voice weak. “I shouldn’t have done that.” His hands were still cradling her face and he tipped her head this way and that gently, peering intently into her eyes as if he could see just in her gaze if the Red Soldier had hurt her or not. Was that possible? she wondered hazily.

“It’s alright,” Gleb assured her.

“You saved my life, darling,” Vlad added from a few paces away. “I will be eternally grateful that you did.”

Anya focused on Gleb, on his soft, dark eyes, on the stubble that colored his strong jaw, and how his thumb swiped comfortingly across her cheek. She pushed the shadows away, knowing that here, now, she could not allow her memories to take hold. If she did, she might be the one hauled off the train to be shot like a dog in the street. 

“I didn’t want him to die,” she explained, helplessly. 

Gleb nodded his understanding. “I know. It’s alright.” He brushed a hand through her hair, bending his knees a bit so he could catch her eyes again with his. “You’re safe.” 

The screech of metal sliding on metal made them all jump. The three turned to the far end of the car where two more guards were entering the carriage. They marched a man – who could only be the Count the soldiers had mentioned earlier – between them, his hands bound in front of him but his head held high. He was well dressed, surprisingly well dressed really, and his dark hair was combed fashionably. When his eyes met Anya’s, she couldn’t help but take a step away. Her back hit Gleb’s chest and his hands came comfortingly to her shoulders. 

The way he looked at her was uncanny. Though she didn’t have much experience with the feeling, Anya could only describe it as recognition.

In a moment, the Count had pulled away from the Red Army guards and stepped towards Anya. Had Gleb not been standing directly behind her Anya would have shrunk back further. By the time the soldiers had trained their guns on Ipolitov he had fallen to his knees in front of Anya and clasped her hand in his. 

There was a beat of utter stillness as the Count and Anya stared at each other. The guards watched them, waiting to decide if they were going to shoot. Gleb’s grip on Anya’s shoulders tightened, but when Ipolitov bowed his head and pressed his lips to her hand, Anya felt a strange sense of calm come over her. She straitened, lifting her chin, and after a moment Count Ipolitov looked up at her. He had just enough time to whisper two words to Anya before the guards had his arms again and were hauling him off the train.

“Do nothing.”

Anya watched him be pulled away in confusion. Her hand tingled from where he had kissed it and Gleb still held her tightly.

“I don’t understand,” Anya said, turning back to the two men. It made no sense. No one had ever bowed to her before. And what had he meant? 

Both Gleb and Vlad regarded her with sad eyes. “Why did he…” 

Then, suddenly, with a crashing realization Anya understood what was about to happen. She would have bolted – would have run out of the car all over again to stand in the way of the death of a stranger – but this time Gleb was ready and he grabbed her before she could take two steps towards the door.

“No!” she shrieked as Gleb wrestled her into his arms. “No, no, NO!” 

Gleb had one arm around her waist, practically lifting her off the floor, the other grabbed her wrist as her fists flailed wildly. 

“Anya, you can’t! There’s nothing you can do!” 

With a quick twist Gleb managed to turn her body around and pull her tightly into his chest. Though she struggled and thrashed she could not escape. 

“Let me go!” She tried to strike him, her hands balled into fists, but they were trapped between her body and his. “Let me go!” she cried again, but her voice broke and it came out more as a plea than a command.

Then, without warning, a gunshot was heard from outside the train car. 

For a moment, the air seemed to be sucked from Anya’s lungs and she could no longer scream. She gasped for breath, still trapped in Gleb’s arms. Then, like a wave crashing over her, the realization hit and Anya let out a cry. Her legs gave way and she would have collapsed if Gleb hadn’t been holding her up. 

Gleb might have been speaking to her, but Anya couldn’t hear him. Her entire body shook with sobs. One of Gleb’s hands came to the back to her head and she pressed herself into his shoulder. 

For a while she lost herself in gunsmoke and pain and residual terror while an overwhelming, incomprehensible loss filled her. She cried for the Count and for herself and for a family she couldn’t remember but somehow knew was gone. 

Gradually she came back to herself. Gleb was murmuring comforts in her ear, still holding her close. The train was moving again. 

“I’m sorry, Anya. I’m so sorry. But you’re safe now. It’s alright.”

His hand was tangled in her hair and he rocked her gently. Her tears had soaked his shirt but he didn’t seem to care.

To her left Vlad’s voice was heard over the noise of the train. “It’s a mercy her tears didn’t give her away,” he remarked.

Anya felt Gleb shift against her. She could only assume it was so that he could scowl at Vlad. “I don’t know who you think she is, but she wouldn’t be like this if you had just had the right papers, _conman_.”

There was a noise, as if Vlad was standing up from sitting on a piece of luggage. “I suppose you’re right about that, comrade. You needn’t worry, though. I won’t say anything about my angel of mercy to anyone. I can promise you that.”

Anya pushed away from Gleb slightly, who loosened his grip on her, although he didn’t let her go completely. 

“Why did he do that?” she asked. Her voice was raw from crying. She brushed aside a few stray tears with the inside of her palm then clarified. “Why did he bow to me?” 

Behind her Vlad chuckled softly and Anya turned to look at him. His smile was small, and his eyes were both sad and soft.

“Because, my dear, you look remarkably like the Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov.”

“You’ve met the Princess Anastasia?” Anya asked, a note of hope coloring her voice. 

Vlad chuckled kindly again. Anya decided distantly that she liked his smile. “Of course, my dear. I conned my way into all sorts of functions. Including two royal weddings.” He winked at her. “I called myself a count as though I’d always been. I hoped one day to con my way into Anastasia’s wedding as well.”

This time his smile had more sadness in it and when he took her hand and kissed it gently Anya couldn’t help but be reminded of the other man who had done so only a few minutes earlier. 

With a quick nod to Gleb, Vlad turned and retreated from the luggage car back into the passenger section. 

When the door closed behind him, Gleb turned his attention back to Anya. “Are you alright?” he asked her, pushing a bit of stray hair out of her face. “We’ll be safe soon.”

“That’s what the soldiers said when they were pointing their guns at us.”

“They’re gone now,” Gleb comforted, but Anya hardly listened. She wasn’t talking about those soldiers. She was seeing different soldiers with different guns.

“They said they were taking us somewhere safe.”

A look of confusion crossed Gleb’s face. “What?” Then, slowly, recognition began to dawn on his face. “You’ve had a fright, Anya, but you mustn't take this too far.”

“What if I am her?” Anya shot back, looking up into Gleb’s face, searching for some sort of answer.

“Shh,” Gleb hushed her, looking around as if expecting the Cheka to jump out from behind a luggage trunk. “We’re almost out of Russia. Once we cross the border…”

“Who do you think I am, Gleb?”

His eyes widened, but only silence followed her question.

Anya took a step back, letting out a shaky breath as anger flashed through her. “You put these ideas in my head then tell me they can’t be true. Your father and the others murdered them. He murdered children, Gleb.” She could see the words hurt him but she couldn’t stop. “Just like those guards murdered that man. And I couldn’t help them. Any of them. Why did you stop me?” Her voice had grown steadily louder and faster. She practically threw the last accusation at him. 

“They would have killed you Anya!” Gleb countered, his voice matching hers in every way – including desperation.

“And they killed him!” shouted Anya, pointing at the now-closed train door they had dragged the Count out of. 

Gleb’s voice was strained. “I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

The laugh Anya let out was harsh and full of contempt. “You didn’t do it for me. You did it because if I were dead I wouldn’t be able to be your precious Anastasia.”

Anya took a step away, but Gleb grabbed her arm and pulled her back to face him. He wasn’t rough and, surprisingly, the touch didn’t frighten Anya, but when she met his eyes she could see his desperation had returned, so strong it was almost palpable. “I don’t care about that. I care about you.”

All at once the anger melted out of Anya. She was left simply tired and sad and when she looked up at Gleb again she furrowed her brows at the contradiction of a man that stood in front of her. “Then you are putting my needs above those of the Bolshevik party and, by your own thinking, the needs of the people of Russia?”

Gleb stared at her in shocked silence and his hand on her arm loosened, then fell to his side.

“You see, Gleb,” Anya pursued sadly, “I don’t think the important thing is that we treat everyone’s needs as equal. I think the important thing is that we treat other people’s needs as more important than our own.” 

With that, Anya turned and walked away, and when the door to the luggage car closed behind her she let out a breath and tried not to linger on the feeling of his body pressed to hers, the hurt in his eyes when she had accused his father of murder, or the empty sadness in her stomach when she saw that he had not followed her.

 

**********

 

Gleb watched Anya go, wishing he could follow her and knowing she wouldn’t want him to. 

She had run out of the train, had bolted after the soldiers – an act of desperation – even though Gleb knew how frightened she must have been. She had stood in the way of death and to his consternation he had let her go. She had cried in his arms, but when the Count bowed to her Gleb had seen how she straightened, her face calm, the tip of her chin… regal. 

Did she believe her fiction? It was hard to tell. 

And yet, could Gleb blame her? She knew more about the Princess Anastasia than she did about her own past. He had called Vlad a conman, but he had been the one to con Anya into playing this part. 

Gleb ran a shaking hand through his once-tame, now-tousled hair. 

She would hate him when she discovered the real reason he had brought her to Paris – she would despise him, the way she did his father. A tiny part of him wondered if she might be right to. His father had done just what she said – he had murdered children. Just as Gleb was going to murder a brokenhearted old woman. 

A son becomes a man at his father’s knee. Yet Gleb was beginning to think that – once the moment came and went – he would hate himself just as much as he knew Anya would. 

The terror and adrenaline that had pumped through him at the sight of a gun to Anya’s head still coursed through him and set him pacing. The car was half empty – just another testament to all the Russian people had lost – so his feet carried him, unthinking, from one end of the carriage and back. 

He told himself – perhaps just as his father once had – that it was for the good of Russia, but what good was that? Neighbor against neighbor, professors pushing brooms. Men dragged off of trains and shot. He had kept Anya safe, but he doubted either of them would soon forgive him for it. 

The guards had been following orders. If his father’d asked questions then where would they be?

He very much doubted the answer was on a train bound for Paris. 

Gleb could still feel Anya trembling in his arms. It hurt him not to be able to take her fear away. But his mind kept flipping back to the way she had stood when the Count fell to his knees in front of her. For a moment, she had been a different person.

For a moment, she had been Anastasia. 

In her there was a power – he could see that now. And, despite it, he would break her, with the squeeze of the trigger from the same gun that had killed the family she had come to love. His heart cried out in protest at the thought of hurting her, but he pushed away the feelings he couldn’t allow.

He was nothing but a man, with nothing but his orders to fulfill. Could he really be vain enough, traitorous enough, to put his own wishes and desires above the good of all Russia?

Russia was all he knew. She had raised him. How could he turn away? 

He could not desert her. He would serve his homeland till he died.

But still…

Still...

The scent of Anya’s hair and the sight of her standing, brave and strong, lingered with him long after they had crossed out of Russia. 

 

**********

 

The train sped on through the night and into another day. Anya figured they must be somewhere in Germany by now. 

She hadn’t slept since they had boarded the train. A combination of fear and excitement made sleep unlikely and the events of the day before, she knew, would lead to nightmares. She had woken screaming enough times to know that sleep was not a good plan if they were trying to go unnoticed. 

Glad had returned to their seat a little while after she had, and though the Count’s death was not discussed, Anya knew it was on both of their minds. 

Now, head clearer, the train rattling beneath her, Anya knew Gleb had done what he’d thought best. He had saved her life – as the guard most certainly would have shot her – and no matter how shaken up she had been her death wouldn’t have helped Ipolitov. He had known, after all, what was about to happen and had asked her not to interfere. 

So, when Gleb offered her a bite to eat from his bag and promised her they would be in Paris in just a few short hours she thanked him with a reconciliatory smile. They both seemed to breathe easier after that. 

“I’ll miss it, you know,” she told him suddenly, after a long bout of silence between them.

“Miss what?” Gleb asked.

“My Petersburg,” she answered.

Gleb glanced at her. “You don’t think you’ll see it again?”

Anya shrugged, then shook her head. “I don’t know. And you? Do you think you’ll go back, Gleb?” 

Gleb set his jaw, ever the Red Army general, but Anya couldn’t help but wonder if she saw uncertainty in Gleb’s eyes. “Russia is all I’ve known,” he told her. 

The sun was well up by now and Anya leaned into the window in order to watch a new world race by. Somewhere down the tracks, she couldn’t help but feel, someone was waiting. 

Life was full of choices – she had prepared herself for that – but why did no one mention fear? 

Looking out the window, Anya could only marvel at how vast the world seemed to her. Surely, she would soon be safe and wanted. Years of dreams just couldn’t be wrong. 

Gleb’s warmth at her side sent Anya’s skin tingling and her fragmented mind spinning in a thousand different directions at once. She had to admit to herself; she had never felt safer than when Gleb held her close. He was the first person to show interest in her, first person, she dared to hope, who might want her around for something other than her street-sweeping abilities. 

There were times – times she wished she could ignore – when Gleb looked at her with such pain she could see that he knew where this road would go. His father had done unspeakable things to a family she had come, in her own way, to love. And when he looked at her the way he had in the luggage carriage only the night before, when emotions and adrenaline had left them screaming at each other, Anya couldn’t help but wonder if the choices ahead might not just lead to a reunion, but also a divide. 

Would she go back to who she was? Or would she go on to find her future?

There were things her heart still needed to know, but as the train hurtled into France, leading her to her past, Anya found herself clinging to Gleb’s hand, terrified that what she wanted to learn would destroy what she had found. 

_Heart,_ she prayed, _don’t fail me now._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment to let me know what you think!
> 
> Or
> 
> Come say Hi to me on [Tumblr](http://wearesuchstuff1.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> I did a fair amount of research when writing this work, so most of my references are either to the musical itself or to history. If you're curious I highly recommend doing some research and falling down the history rabbit hole.  
> That being said, I am not an historian and most of my research was done on Wikipedia. I apologize if any of my facts are wrong. This is, of course, a work of fiction and I do not own the Broadway production (or any version) of Anastasia.


	5. The Impossible Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "To dream the impossible dream."

With a delighted shriek, Anya ran and jumped, landing with a delightfully soft _ploof_ on the bed in her hotel room. Gleb stood in the open doorway behind her, chuckling.

“First a train, now my very own room!” Anya laughed, emerging from the depths of pillows and blankets. “I never imagined a bed could be this soft.” Anya liked the way Gleb’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. 

“Our comrades are treating us well,” Gleb agreed. Anya ignored the way Gleb’s eyes shifted away from hers as if he couldn’t quite meet her gaze. 

The thought, however sobered Anya for a moment. The events on the train still hung on her mind. “Thank you, Gleb, for getting me here. And,” she added, then paused, “for everything.”

She couldn’t understand why Gleb looked so pained at her words.

With what would have been described by any number of the etiquette books she and Gleb had spent hours poring over at the Winter Palace as a rather unladylike bounce, Anya existed the bed and tripped lightly to the window. “I want to spend the whole day exploring the city!” she exclaimed, gazing down at the street below.

“Paris certainly holds the key to your heart.” Anya shot Gleb a smile and for a moment he didn’t seem to know what to do. “Well, you go on if you want to. I’m going to try and find out where we can meet the Empress.” 

They agreed on a plan to meet back at the hotel later and Anya skipped off, pausing only briefly to practice her French with the desk clerk.

Her excited feet lead her all over the city. Nothing could be more different than the Russia that she knew. The dripping fashions, the glittering lights, the cafes fit to bursting with people of all sorts. The vibrancy and energy were all seemingly foreign to Anya, and yet, at the same time, they all felt _right_. 

She’d dreamed of a city beyond all compare, it was hard to believe she was finally there.

At dusk, she found herself crossing a bridge. She had purchased a small book describing the city and it was to her surprise to read that she was over La Seine on the Pont Alexandre bridge, named after Anastasia’s grandfather. The cornerstone for the structure had been laid by Tsar Nicholas II, Anastasia’s father, and Anya couldn’t help but take a moment to look at the sky and the water. There were boats heading in and thousands of lights shining below her. For a moment Anya felt that every light was like a promise, leading her to answers she had been seeking for as long as she could remember. 

 

**********

 

After wandering Paris for hours, it was finally his ears that lead Gleb to answers. He caught a snatch of Russian among the incomprehensible babble of French and followed it. 

The couple was far too well dressed to be good comrades, but it was the first lead he’d had and the sun had already set. Anya would be waiting for him. 

He was led down a side street glittering in lights. The extravagant building the couple entered boldly declared itself – in Russian – to be the Neva Club. A man stood outside the club, ridiculously dressed in a Tsarist era traditional costume, and took the man and woman’s invitations as they entered. Cursing, Gleb stayed in the shadows, watching. 

At first the partygoers came in twos and threes, but soon more and more people flooded into the street. The men wore tails and top hats, the women dresses that revealed too much and – between the fabric, furs, and jewels – would have paid for an entire Russian family's supper for a year. Gleb listened and watched but it wasn’t until a carriage pulled up that he learned anything interesting. 

The man at the door helped the woman down for the coach. For a moment Gleb was seized with excitement at the thought that this could be the Dowager Empress. He could end it now, without ever involving Anya. But the woman was too young, and, though everyone bowed to her, clearly did not hold the necessary station. 

The woman seemed to talk to everyone – even before she got into the building. Gleb’s ears perked up when he heard several people ask about the Empress, but she didn’t reveal anything until after kissing cheeks with a woman who affectionately called her ‘Lily’.

“It’s so sad,” Lily confided in her friend, “to watch her wasting away like this. She doesn’t hear me. She’s closed the door.” Here her friend took her arm and began leading her towards the entrance to the club. “But at least she’ll be going to the ballet tomorrow. That should cheer her.” With that, the two women disappeared into the club and the street was left quiet.

Stepping out from his hiding spot, Gleb approached the man standing at the door. “Excuse me, com– friend,” Gleb corrected himself quickly. “Who was that woman who just went inside?”

The man looked him over, head to toe, and raised an eyebrow. “That woman, _comrade_ , was Countess Lily Malevsky-Malevitch, the Dowager Empress’s lady-in-waiting.” The man must have seen – and misattributed – Gleb’s surprise because he added, “It’s the shoes. You can always tell a Russian just off the train by his shoes. If you go around back they might have something for you to eat.”

Gleb raised an eyebrow, then shook his head. “Thank you, I’m fine.” 

He was about to turn away from the man and, with the information he needed in toe, head back to the hotel and Anya when a man sidestepped around him and approached the Neva Club door. Something familiar about the man stopped Gleb and he studied him, trying to place him. Gleb was surprised, after a moment, to realize that the finely dressed, well-trimmed man brushing imaginary dust off his plainly new suit of clothes was Vlad – the same man whose life Anya had saved on the train. He clearly hadn’t recognized Gleb and announced loudly to the man at the door that he was, “here to live in the land of yesterday”. 

The man let him in without a second glance and the last thing Gleb saw before he disappeared into the club were Vlad’s new, shiny shoes. Gleb just shook his head and tuned his steps back towards Anya.

 

**********

 

It was late – later than Gleb would have liked – and still he sat, staring out at the city of light, thinking. 

His coat was tossed across a chair, his collar undone, his sleeves rolled up. He ran a hand through his hair for the hundredth time and tried not to think about the girl in the next room, the gun lying on his bed, or the specter of his father reflected back at him in the window pane.

But still… he thought.

He should be glad, he reasoned. Anya was in Paris now. No matter what happened tomorrow the girl would get a family. And yet, nothing was what it was. He hadn’t known she mattered to him, but now he could see she did. 

_Comrade and princess,_ Gleb scoffed to himself. A fairytale if he’d ever heard one.

Gorlinsky would promote him. His service to Russia would be recognized. He had everything to win, and all it would take was a dead empress and a broken-hearted girl. 

With everything to win, the only thing to lose was her. 

When the bells of Notre Dame chimed one o’clock Gleb stood and turned to the gun. He lay out a cloth on the bed then, slowly and methodically, began cleaning it. 

His father had taught him how and he concentrated on the task at hand, making sure his hands didn’t shake. He had just clicked the last piece back into place when a scream tore apart the silence.

It came, Gleb immediately knew, from the room next to his where Anya slept and it sounded so frighteningly similar to the screams that had awoken him late one night from the Ipatiev House across from his parent’s home in Yekaterinburg that, for a moment, he could only stand in frozen shock with his father’s gun in his hand.

Another cry broke through the night and with the sound movement seemed to come back into Gleb. He ran out into the hallway, dropping the gun onto the bed before he even had time to consider that he might need it.

The hotel was small, they were the only people staying on that floor, and Gleb crossed the landing to Anya’s door in a few quick strides, but when his hand found the doorknob Gleb paused, unsure of himself. It seemed forbidden, somehow. He had seen Anya cry, had seen her laugh, and had seen her gripped by the terror of what her memories might reveal. He had watched her stand in front of a gun and set her jaw not in fear, but in defiance. Yet something stopped him at the door of Anya’s room. Maybe it was the thought of seeing her in her night clothes, or maybe, one way or another, he knew he wouldn’t leave the room the same man he walked in as.

These thoughts burst through his head in a moment, but when another broken whimper came through the door his hesitation disappeared. He wasn’t surprised to find the door unlocked. Anya was far too trusting. She had trusted him, after all. 

Pushing the door open Gleb entered the dimly lit room. The light from outside was enough for him to see that Anya still lay in the bed that had caused her such excitement earlier that day, but now she was tangled up in the sheets, shuddering and moaning in her sleep. 

“No! No, please, no!” Her cry slipped into a sob as Anya’s head tossed back and forth on the pillow, her golden-brown hair fanned out around her. 

Gleb was by her side in an instant. “Anya? Anya. Wake up.” She thrashed and shook with dry sobs, but her eyes remained closed.

Suddenly another scream escaped her. It sent a chill through Gleb’s chest and if he hadn't been sitting on the bed next to her, holding her arms steady in his hands, he would have assumed she was being murdered to evoke such a scream.

All at once Anya’s eyes flashed open. She struggled against his grip, pushing away from him until her back was pressed against the headboard. Though she was awake she didn’t seem to be seeing him.

“Anya. It’s me. It’s Gleb. You’re safe,” he assured her quickly, his voice hushed but his grip on her arms still firm. He grounded her as she began to blink back to herself, her breath coming in stuttering gasps. “That’s it, Anya. You’re safe, just breathe.”

Eyes flicking around the room, Anya’s gaze managed to find his, focusing on the present, no longer lost, as she had been, in the past. Still she trembled under his touch, chest heaving.

“The voices keep coming back, Gleb. They’re always there. О Боже, I’m frightened,” Anya sobbed.

“Hey, hey, stay with me,” Gleb entreated, pushing hair out of her face. “That’s all they are: voices. You’re having a nightmare.” 

“Don’t leave me, Gleb,” Anya begged, her voice breaking. For a moment Gleb closed his eyes against the pain her words caused him. He wouldn’t leave her, she would leave him tomorrow after a gunshot and a splatter of blood. Tomorrow she would be Anastasia and he would be a Cheka general. But for tonight she was just a frightened girl and he was a boy who loved her, so he pulled Anya into his arms and held her, rocking her gently, and murmuring in her ear promises he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep.

For a few minutes silence descended around them. Slowly Anya’s shoulders stopped shaking and her breath came easier. She had burrowed into his exposed neck, and when she pulled away, sitting back and pushing her hair out of her face, Gleb immediately missed the warmth.

Without meaning to, Gleb let his eyes trace their way across Anya’s form. Her skin glowed pail in the half light and her nightgown clung delicately to her body. One thin strap had fallen from her shoulder, revealing more of her breasts than was all together proper. But it wasn’t her milky complexion that sent a flash of confusion and worry through Gleb. Just were Anya’s breast began to swell, a scar marked her. Perhaps five centimeters long and two centimeters wide, the knife wound was clean and precise. Gleb had seen enough battle wounds to know Anya was lucky to still have her life. 

Unthinking, Gleb reached out and ran his hand lightly over Anya’s skin. She shivered under his touch but made no move to stop him as his fingers ghosted down her shoulder and across the smooth expanse of her exposed chest, stopping when he reached the pucker of her scar. He could feel her breasts rise and fall with each breath. 

“What happened?” he asked, voice hoarse.

Anya shook her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I woke up in the hospital with it bandaged. The nurses said they had a hard time stopping the bleeding, that I bled more than I should have. I have another scar, almost the same, here,” her hand found her right side, just along her bottom rib.

Gleb let his hand fall to Anya’s stomach, his fingers curled around the side of her ribs, where her hand had rested a moment ago. His thumb caressed her lightly and he tried not to concentrate on how much of her small waist was covered by his large hand or how her breath caught in her throat as he pressed his thumb across her side again.

“Go on?” Gleb asked. Next to him Anya’s legs shifted, the thin fabric of her nightdress hiking up dangerously close to the top of her thigh. Anya didn’t seem to notice.

“They said it was a miracle I managed to make it to the road at all. My clothing was ripped, like someone had gone through it, trying to pull it off me,” her voice stuttered at that, and Gleb felt a flash of white hot rage at even the thought. “I had two cracked ribs and a concussion. I was covered in bruises, it took weeks for them to heal properly – longer than normal. It was as if something had slammed into me a few times but somehow hadn’t broken the skin.” 

Gleb’s hand left Anya’s waist as he ran it shakily through his hair. “You could have died,” Gleb murmured, voice hushed. 

“Could have,” she whispered, words so soft they were almost lost even in the breath of space – somehow both frighteningly small and maddeningly large – that separated them, “or should have? Perhaps I was meant to die there.” 

Without meeting his eyes, Anya reached out, taking Gleb’s hand in both of hers, holding it loosely in her lap. Gleb watched her – the way her hair fell over her shoulder, the way her light pink cheeks still glittered with a few stray tears, the way her bottom lip caught slightly between her teeth – and waited, knowing where her thoughts had gone and fruitlessly wishing his thoughts hadn’t gone to the exact same place.

“Gleb,” she asked finally, “who do you think I am?”

Sitting in the moonlight, Anya’s skin bared and her hands clasped in his, with every beat of Gleb’s heart telling him that he loved her, that he had been doomed to love her from the start, and that despite what the morning might bring he always would love her, Gleb could do nothing but tell Anya the truth. “If I were the Dowager Empress I would want you to be Anastasia.”

Surprise flooded Anya’s eyes. “You would?”

Gleb allowed a small smile to touch his lips and squeezed Anya’s hands. “Yes. I would want the girl I saw playing with her brother across the street to have grown up to be strong and confident and beautiful like you.”

He couldn’t tell in the darkness if his words had made Anya blush. “I didn’t know you saw her. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It wasn’t important,” Gleb said with a shrug. “It won’t come up with the Empress.” He looked away but Anya shifted next to him, pulling herself closer to him and tilting her head into his line of vision once more.

“Tell me now?”

He smiled sadly, letting the memory wash over him, then ran both his hands through his hair before relenting and beginning the story. “It was June. I was given leave after the end of the War to go visit my family. My mother and father were living in Yekaterinburg. You know what they were doing there.”

Anya nodded, but kept her face blank. Gleb couldn’t help but remember how she looked on the train when she had thrown his father’s deeds in his face. Perhaps she had been right to. 

“We lived across from the Ipatiev House – the guards called it the House of Special Purpose – and sometimes I could hear the children playing. They had a swing in the back yard, I could see the tree it was attached to, and once in a while, if they swung high enough, I could see the Princesses’ legs over the top of the fence.” 

Gleb could still remember their laughter and his confusion at the thought that they could still find something to laugh at, with everything that had happened to them. After their death that confusion had turned, for a long time, to anger – given what they’d done they shouldn’t have been allowed to laugh. Now, he was surprised to find, the memory only brought him sadness.

“I was with the Cheka already, so one day my father brought me with him to the guard house. When he went on duty I followed him out, but heard them laughing in the garden, so I went around the back to see.” Gleb’s brow furrowed as he remembered. “There should have been a guard there – someone should have stopped me – but I didn’t see anyone. Just the youngest daughter – the Princess Anastasia – and her brother on the swing.”

Standing, Gleb crossed to the window. He could feel his mind losing itself in the memory, not in the way Anya did, but in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to in a long time. He still thought of that day, now and then, but he usually pushed the images away. After everything his family had done and all he had become it did him no good to remember that day. 

“What was she like?” Anya asked, and though his back was too her Gleb knew her well enough to know she was perched on the edge of the bed, a look of excitement on her face. 

“Beautiful. And proud, like a queen. And yet she ran around the garden laughing like she wouldn’t be dead in a matter of weeks. She stopped when she saw me, frozen like she hadn’t seen a new face since she’d gotten there. Or maybe she thought I was going to shoot her,” he added bitterly, more to himself than to Anya. Could he have blamed her if that was what she’d thought?

“I was eighteen, still practically a child, but she looked at me, and then she smiled.”

When he glanced back at Anya he could have sworn it was the same smile.

“What happened?” she asked.

Gleb shrugged. “There was a noise and my father and some people came out of the house. She ran off. I didn’t mind. I thought I’d find her again, but I didn’t. A few weeks later I woke up to their screams.”

The bed squeaked and Anya padded softly to Gleb’s side. She lay a soft hand on his arm. “You didn’t kill them, Gleb.” When he met her eyes, she smiled. “I can imagine you there. Thin, not too clean.”

Gleb raised his eyebrow but when Anya giggled his lips couldn’t help but turn up. He prompted her, “It was hot.”

“Not a cloud in the sky,” she added quickly. “She was playing with her brother. She loved her brother, they all did. How could they not?” Anya’s gaze began to wander, as if she were surveying the scene she was painting. “And on that day Alexi wasn’t sick and the sun was out and they had a swing, so why not laugh? The guard was even leaving them alone because…” she searched for a reason for a moment, then giggled again when the answer seemed to come to her. “Because the man who was supposed to be watching them was taken with Maria and they were off together in a corner of the yard.”

She was trying to make him laugh – and she did – but Gleb felt an odd twist in his stomach. He thought he could remember his father mentioning that a guard had been having a fling with one of the sisters.

He was lost enough in his own memories that he hardly noticed the way Anya’s eyes began to glaze over. “Alexi was on the swing and she started to run through the sun and the heat.” 

Gleb turned to face her now, her hand still resting on his arm, his going to her elbow, keeping her close as he listened to his memory played back to him through different – impossible – eyes. As he was caught once again in her beautify and the feelings crashing over him he took a step forward, intent on closing the distance between them, hardly registering the shift in her words. 

“She looked around the garden, then a boy caught my eye… and I stopped when I saw him but I wasn’t afraid, because he was dark and handsome, but most of all kind. And I tried not to smile, but I smiled.” Anya’s gaze focused once again on the present, coming to rest on the face of the boy she had seen once in a garden. “And then, he bowed.” 

Horror took Gleb and he grabbed her before he even realized what he was doing, her arms held tight in his shaking hands, his voice loud and desperate, even in his own ears. “I was a child. I’d never bowed to anyone in my life and I never will again. You can’t know that! I didn’t tell you that!” 

He shook her, trying somehow to keep the truth at bay. She couldn’t know that. No one could know that. The Red Army general had bowed to the daughter of the deposed Tsar. 

But of course, she did know. Somehow, she had always known. And in the end, it was actually so much worse. The Red Army general had fallen in love with the daughter of the deposed Tsar.

She was calm, despite his grip on her arms, and she looked up at him, with her Romanov eyes, the same serene gaze she had held on the train. 

“You didn’t have to” she told him, her voice low and full of wonder. “I remember. Gleb, I know who I am.”

The truth, unescapable and undeniable, crashed over Gleb. His grip on her upper arms tightened and for one terrifying moment he didn’t know if he wanted to crush her to him or toss her away in disgust. He settled for all but dropping her, as if her skin had burned him. He backed away from her, shaking his head. 

“Anya, no.” His voice was begging – one last plea for her to stay his Anya. 

_Please. Don’t do this. Don’t make me do this._

Then he was running, just as he wished he had run when his father killed Anastasia... tried to kill Anastasia. 

He ran into the hallway and to his room, where his father’s gun lay on the bed as he had left it, waiting for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment to let me know what you think!
> 
> Or
> 
> Come say Hi to me on [Tumblr](http://wearesuchstuff1.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> I did a fair amount of research when writing this work, so most of my references are either to the musical itself or to history. If you're curious I highly recommend doing some research and falling down the history rabbit hole.  
> That being said, I am not an historian and most of my research was done on Wikipedia. I apologize if any of my facts are wrong. This is, of course, a work of fiction and I do not own the Broadway production (or any version) of Anastasia.


	6. The Point Of No Return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Past the point of no return  
> The final threshold  
> The bridge is crossed, so stand and watch it burn  
> We've passed the point of no return."

Midnight blue flowed around her legs as Anya climbed the stairs of the Palais Garnier; the Paris Opera House.  The sparkling grandeur of the famous theatre would have enthralled Anya normally, but now her stomach was in knots and her fingers, gripping the cords of her drawstring purse, shook.  

She would meet the Dowager Empress tonight.  She would see her nana – her surviving family – again after all these years.  The thought frightened and excited her, and yet it was not the Dowager Empress on whom Anya’s thoughts dwelt as she entered the opera house.  

She had not seen Gleb since the night before, when her revelation had driven him from her room, leaving her cold and alone.  Had she found herself and lost Gleb? Gleb – the man who had cared for her, comforted and laughed with her, the man who had pulled her out of the line of gunfire and whose hands had drawn lines of electricity across her skin as they had made their way over her form in the night.  

Gleb – the boy she had smiled at in a yard oh, so long ago.

She couldn’t stand the thought of losing him.  She hadn’t known he mattered to her, but now she could see he did.  

Anya paused when she saw the grand staircase.  Her eyes flitted around the room, taking in the paintings, the red velvet, the gold leaf.  Somehow the sight didn’t overwhelm her. It looked, in some ways, as she imagined – or rather, remembered – the grand staircase at the Winter Palace had once looked. 

She had stayed awake the rest of the night, her thoughts wild.  She hadn’t been able to cry, but she feared sleep, feared seeing once again the people she now realized were her family – her dead family.  When morning brought no knock on her door Anya had ventured out once again into Paris. Tonight was her only night to see her nana, to get her nana to believe her when she said she was Anastasia.  Maria Feodorovna was her only family now. She would make a good impression – she would be Anastasia – if it killed her.

Anya looked around for Gleb once more, praying that she’d see him stepping towards her from the crowd of – seemingly – thousands.  Instead, through the throng of finely dressed patrons ascending the stairs, Anya saw another face, one she was shocked to realize she recognized.    

In a black suit and tails, Vlad had a well-dressed woman on his arm.  Anya hardly recognized him as the man she had saved on the train, but the crinkle of his kind eyes when he smiled at the woman was the same.  The women's brown and red sheath dress matched her curls and she held herself with authority and poise. Though she was older, Anya couldn’t help but think she might recognize the woman, but they disappeared into the crowd before Anya could be sure.

Turning away, Anya paused when her eyes landed on another figure.  Like Gaston Leroux’s infamous phantom, haunting this very opera, Gleb had suddenly appeared through the crowd.  He stopped when he saw her, and Anya could see the pain, anger, and sadness that colored his face for a moment, tinged with another emotion she couldn’t identify.  Then his face when blank and he was simply a Russian and a Bolshevik, just – Anya reminded herself – as he had always been. 

He looked striking, Anya couldn’t help but admit to herself, in his black tails and white tie.  His hair was combed smartly, but he hadn’t shaved. Anya smiled to herself – she had always loved the stubble that defined Gleb’s strong jaw.   

When he reached her he seemed at a loss.  Gleb’s eyes traveled up and down her dress, but when they reached her face she saw a new expression in his eyes – fear.  Pushing down her own feelings of anxiety, Anya gripped the strings of her purse – heavy with the weight of the jeweled music box it held inside – tighter and lifted her chin.

“Shall we go in?” she asked.  Gleb simply nodded and, as a gentleman would a princess, offered her his arm.

 

**********

 

Anya had always been beautiful.  Gleb had noticed it the first time he’d ever saw her; trembling, cheeks smeared with dirt and mud, she had looked up at him and he had been captured.  

And yet – Gleb reminded himself – that hadn’t been the first time he’d seen her, and even in Yekaterinburg, hair wild, eyes sparkling, and out of breath from running, she had still been beautiful.

But tonight, she was stunning.  

Her blue dress sparkled in the light.  Jewels, embroidered in geometric shapes after the latest art deco fashions, crisscrossed down the midnight bodice and skirt, and pearls dripped over her shoulders and down her arms.  Her delicate hand, encased in a white opera glove, wound around his arm and, although he knew it might very well be the last time he felt it, Gleb took comfort in her touch.

She had always been a princess, but tonight she looked the part.

Tonight, she was Anastasia.

When the pair finished ascending the staircase Gleb could hardly comprehend the amount of gold and decoration that met them.  All of Paris seemed to be gathered in the room, but although both he and Anya looked around, the Empress was nowhere to be seen.  Not that Gleb had been expecting to see her. She would be seated safely in her box, waiting for the ballet to start, not knowing, as Gleb did, how the play would end. 

From the inner pocket of his jacket Gleb could feel the cold of his father’s gun pressing against his skin.  After last night he had sat with the gun in his hands, his thoughts chasing themselves around his mind, long into the morning.  Eventually he had blinked himself back to reality.

What was meant to be was meant to be.  He could see that now at a glance.

Anya – Anastasia – was radiant and confident, but Gleb had long ago given his heart and will to Russia.  There was nothing – no one – he could allow to stand in the way of his loyalty to his country. 

As the beginning of the ballet was announced and Gleb and Anya turned their steps towards the box that awaited them, Gleb realized with a pang that, while his comrades’ planning of the Dowager Empress's execution had been meticulous, they’d forgotten one thing: romance.

He never should have let them dance.

 

**********

 

The ballet was exquisite.  

Anya allowed the strains of Tchaikovsky’s _Swan Lake_ to wash over her.  Below her the plot was beginning to come to a head.  The princess was dancing, the feathers of her costume glinting under the lights as her piqués carried her across the stage, but the sorcerer who had entrapped her and the man she loved were making it harder and harder for her true form to shine through.

Anya couldn’t help but acknowledge the irony.

Though the lights were dim Anya could sense Gleb sitting beside her.  She doubted he had been watching much of the ballet as his eyes seemed fixed on her. She shifted in her seat but kept her neck strait and her back tall.  She knew who she was, and neither she nor Gleb could change that.

Across from her, Anya could just make out the Dowager Empress’s box.  The old woman sat poised, and yet something in her demeanor told Anya that she was irrevocably, tragically sad. She had not known happiness in a long time.    

Looking at her face Anya couldn’t help but wonder; could this be the evening, the place?  Would the Empress give her the home, love, and family she so craved? 

For a moment, the Empress seemed to look directly at Anya, and Anya’s hands squeezed in her lap. Then, just as suddenly, the old woman’s eyes slid back to the stage and the moment was gone. 

On stage the prima ballerina began her sequence of pirouettes, but Anya couldn’t help but wonder, after all this time of her memories only coming to her in her nightmares, was she only dreaming?  

Her past and her future were so near.  But was everything she wanted really clear?  

 

**********

 

Gleb could practically feel the nerves radiating off Anya.  Next to him, this frightened girl was absently shredding her program in her lap and it was all Gleb could do to stop himself from reaching out to place a hand over hers.  

She was so near at hand, the last Romanov daughter.  He could put an end to it, hear and now, in this very theatre box.  If it had been good enough for an American president, surely it was enough for a lost princess and her ailing grandmother.  Yet he sat, dancers spinning below him, his heart and mind at war.

He couldn’t help but study her.  A golden curl had slipped loose from its arrangement and hung tantalizingly at the nape of Anya’s neck. The dim light reflected off the huge chandelier – hanging precariously over the opera house’s audience – and set the jewels on her dress and at her ears glittering. 

On a street in Leningrad, Anya had met a man who had seen her fear but had been captured by her eyes.  He had held her, rescued her, even. They were small, simple things, but somewhere along the way this man had fallen in love with her.  And now fate had brought them here.

It wasn’t right.  She should be dead.   _Anastasia_ should be dead.  And, just as his father had, Gleb knew that he – the good Russian – would be forced to pull the trigger.  The times must change – the _world_ must change – and no matter how much his hand shook or his heart achedm Gleb knew he must keep his nerve and see it through.  It was what he had come to do.

Love was not – could not be – what revolution was for. 

 

**********

 

As the dancers took their final bows and the audience stood, applause pulsing through the theatre, Anya set her shoulders, clutching her purse and raising her chin.  She swept out of the box before Gleb could stop her.

He caught up to her just before she reached the first flight of stairs.  His hand grasped her arm and he pulled her back to face him. 

“Don’t do this, Anya,” he begged, his eyes full of a pain Anya could feel echoed in her own heart.  His grip on her bicep was tight, but with desperation, not with anger. “Don’t be her.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

It broke Anya’s heart to pull away from Gleb’s pleading eyes. 

She knew what she had to do, she reminded herself as she allowed her feet to carry her away from the man she loved and towards what was left of the family she longed for.

_Find a way, Anastasia._

 

**********

 

Anya’s heels clicked as quickly as the typewriter keys her rather irritable comrade used at the Department of Public Service Workers as she ran out of the opera.  In the street, a line of automobiles awaited the ballet goers, but one car stood out among the rest.

Waiting at the head of the line, a gold crest mounted on its side, Anya could just see a white head, complete with tiara, settling into the vehicle.  Slipping through the crowd she made her way towards the Duchess’s automobile until suddenly she bumped – quite literally – into a taller man who was saying a rather affectionate goodbye to the woman on his arm.

“I’m terribly sorry, my dear, I didn’t see you there,” the man began to apologize, but Anya’s surprise cut him off.  

“Vlad!”

First confusion, then recognition washed over Vlad’s face.  “Anya?” In another instant Vlad had taken in Anya’s dress, hair, and posture.  Just as quickly he had slipped into a bow. 

“You are not Anya tonight, are you?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye and a half smile when he stood. 

Anya shook her head.

“Who is this?” the woman standing next to Vlad interjected.  Anya had seen her earlier, she realized. Her dress was all the fashion and her face was familiar, somehow.

“I beg your pardon.”  Vlad took the woman’s hand again.  “Countess Lily Malevsky-Malevitch, this is,” Vlad paused delicately and looked at Anya. 

“The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov.” 

The look of blank astonishment on Countess Malevsky-Malevitch’s face would have made Anya laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation she now found herself in if it weren’t for the spark of recognition in Lily’s eyes as her gaze traveled over Anya.

Vlad turned to the Countess.  “Lily, this is the girl I told you about.  The one who saved my life on the train.”

Confusion crossed Lily’s face.  “I thought you said her name was Anna?”

Before they could get too far off track, Anya stepped in.  “It’s not Anna, it’s Anya. And it’s not Anya, it’s Anastasia.”

Lily appraised Anya once again, then let out a shaky breath.  “Well my dear, you certainly look like her. But I’m sorry, the Empress isn’t seeing any more young ladies.  She’s had her heart broken too many times. She doesn’t want to hope anymore.”

Anya was about to protest that she really was her, that she had traveled across Russia and Europe to be here, and that she’d broken her own heart just to speak to the one person who could – just maybe – help her make sense of her fragmented memories and be her family once again when a voice from the waiting car, soft but firm, called for Lily.

With a quick farewell and a lingering look at Anya, Lily was gone.

There was a pressure behind Anya’s eyes and she blinked quickly, hoping to keep the tears at bay.  “She thinks I want the reward,” she said quietly to Vlad. “Even before I knew who I was I never wanted the reward.”

Vlad’s comforting hand found Anya’s shoulder and he peered up into her face.  “I believe you are her,” he told her. “I believed you were her the first time I saw you, standing over me, looking for all the world like a guardian angel.  Anastasia means resurrected, you know. And, if you ask me, you certainly have been.”

A small smile touched Anya’s lips.  Someone believed her. Someone who actually wanted to believed her.

Vlad was quiet for a moment, then he seemed to glance around quickly.  “Come with me,” he muttered, taking Anya’s hand and beginning to lead her quickly towards the line of automobiles.

“Where are we going?” Anya asked, wondering for a moment if Vlad had seen someone in the crowd.

“You saved my life,” Vlad told her, pushing her hurriedly into an empty car and ignoring the cries of protest from to couple who had been at the front of the waiting que.  “So I’m going to give you back yours.” He gave the address quickly to the driver then sat back as the lights of Paris began to roll by outside their windows. 

When they reached the house – a small palace, really – Vlad helped Anya from the car and nodded to the guards standing at the door.  They appeared to know him already, because they allowed him to open the door and lead Anya into a grand, if dimly lit, entranceway. 

Vlad motioned for Anya to wait, then peeked through a set of double door to one side of the hall.

“Lily’s just coming,” Vlad whispered to Anya.  “Stay out of sight, but when Lily is thoroughly distracted, sneak through the doors at the other end of the room.”

With that Vlad pushed open the doors and entered the room.  Anya watched through the crack and in surprisingly short order Vlad had Lily laying on a sofa, kissing her passionately.

Cringing at the mere thought of the hinges squeaking, Anya pushed open the doors just enough to slip through.  The soft carpeting underfoot muffled the sound of her steps, and given how things were progressing on the sofa Anya doubted much could distract Lily now.  As she tiptoed past, Anya couldn't help but laugh to herself at the Countess and the common man. Before she knew it, Anya was to the other side of the room and through the doors.  

When she turned and found herself facing the Dowager Empress, Anya knew that she was now on her own.

“Who are you?” the older woman demanded sternly.  She leaned on a cane, still dressed lavishly from her trip to the ballet, but her dress was less in the fashion of the roaring 20s, as the Americans were calling it, and harkened back rather to a time when Tsars and Tsarinas ruled supreme.  

With a shock, Anya realized that Gleb had been right.  That time had come to an end. Maybe it had needed to for the world to move on. 

But then Anya’s gaze found the woman’s face and suddenly her eyes were filled with tears, her nose with the scent of orange blossoms, and her ears with the notes of a song played from a music box.

“Nana.” 

Anya had thought it would be easy, somehow, as if her nana would take one look at her and know it was her long-lost Anastasia. It wasn’t easy, of course. Maria Feodorovna was far too proud and had been broken hearted far too long to allow for that. 

“You’re just another imposter,” the Empress realized, annoyance and pain on her face. “Get out of my sight. Who let you in here? Where is Lily?”

“Lily doesn’t know I’m here,” Anya told her, speaking quickly. “Please, your majesty. I just want to know who I am. I’m hoping you can tell me.”

“You’re the girl from the ballet.”

It wasn’t a question, but Anya nodded anyway. “Yes.”

There was silence, cut through after a moment by the Empress’s resigned sigh. “Fine.” Even in acceptance the Dowager Empress was curt. “Let’s begin.”

Maybe, Anya thought, Maria Feodorovna saw some spark in her eyes, some note of familiarity in her smile, that gave her pause. Or maybe she simply thought that hearing Anya out would be the quickest way to get rid of her.

What followed was a barrage of questions unlike any she and Gleb had rehearsed. Gleb had told Anya she would have to convince the Empress of who she was. They had studied together, perfecting Anya’s knowledge. But now, knowing it wasn’t an act, all Anya could do was allow herself to remember her grandmother, her family, and her life before the war, before Yekaterinburg and the horrors that place had brought with it. She could only pray that would be enough.

“Where was Anastasia’s father born?”

“In the Alexandra Palace.”

“Who healed little Alexi when he was ill?”

“Our friend. Grigori Rasputin.”

“What was Anastasia’s mother’s full title?” The Dowager Empress’s questions were coming quickly and mercilessly.

“She was always just mama to us,” Anya answered, the tears she had been holding back most of the night threatening again to spill over her cheeks. 

The Empress tutted, but looked away as if she didn’t like to see Anya’s tears. “Oh do stop crying, girl. Why do they always cry?” 

Anya didn’t have much of an answer to that, so instead of saying anything she sat down on the settee. The Empress seemed horrified for a moment at Anya’s lack of formality, but after a minute her face soften. With an elegant grace gained only through years of experienced, Maria Feodorovn swept across the room and settled on the sofa next to Anya.

“You really do look like her,” the Dowager Empress admitted after a moment. The sadness was back, coloring her face and her voice. 

“And if I _am_ her?”

The Empress shook her head helplessly. “I wish there was some way to tell.”

It was the music box, of course, just as she’d somehow always known it would be. Her fingers found the drawstring of her bag, the beads, matching her dress, jingling. 

“Do you remember the last time you saw Anastasia?”

The Empress let out a breath. “I didn’t know it was the last time. One never does.”

“You were leaving for Paris,” Anya pursued. “You never came back. You gave her a music box. I believe this was it.”

The box fit well in her hand, like an old friend, and when her trembling fingers clicked the key into place and music filled the room, it brought with it – for the first time – two sets of memories. The faces of her family, the eyes of her grandmother, and the words of a childhood lullaby were intertwined now with the feeling of dancing in Gleb’s arms around the ruined Winter Palace, of the way he said her name, his voice deep and smooth, and of the way his eyes – his beautiful, dark eyes – regarded her, so filled with emotion. 

Her tears spilled over then – the words of the song once forgotten joining them – but her nana was singing too, her tears joining Anastasia’s, and then she was in her nana’s arms. Safe and loved and home.

Then why did the empty burning in her heart still remain? 

The next hour was a whirlwind. There were tears, then Lily was called in and there were more tears. Anastasia explained hastily, as best she could, what had happened to get her here, and when his part in the plot was discovered, Vlad was called into the room and thanked heartily. 

Anastasia mentioned Gleb – how could she not? – but she glossed over those parts as quickly as possible – the memory of his face when she pulled away from him at the ballet still too fresh and painful for her to dwell on. Neither nana nor Lily seemed to pay much mind to his part in the story, though, and while Vlad raised an eyebrow he was observant enough not to bring it up.

Finally, well past the hour any decent person would be in bed, Anastasia was able to slip away – leaving the Empress and Countess talking of press conferences, rewards, and balls – and find a moment’s peace. Her feet led her to a room – elegant in its simplicity – with arched glass doors leading onto a terrace overlooking the now-dark gardens. 

Her hands were shaking – they had been since she’d confronted her nana – and her thoughts wouldn’t quiet.

She should be glad – she was where she should be – but nothing was what it had been. She had gained everything she had wanted and more; a home, a family, answers to the questions she had been asking for as long as she could remember. 

She should be happy. Why wasn’t she happy?

She knew the answer, of course. In becoming Anastasia, _Anya_ had lost one thing, one person. He had paid the price for everything she’d won. And despite the glitter and glamor, the long days spent wondering and the even longer nights spent dreaming, suddenly it was clear to her – Gleb was too high a price to pay.

With newfound purpose in her step, Anastasia turned. She would go to her nana and explain that there was something she had to do, someone she had to find, and that no matter what her past had been she could not truly be who she was without him knowing that she loved him and without at least seeing him, one last time. 

But in that moment Anastasia's eyes widened and she stumbled back with a shocked gasp at the sight of the man she loved, still dressed from their night at the ballet, stalking towards her with a gun in his hand.

“Gleb.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment to let me know what you think!
> 
> Or
> 
> Come say Hi to me on [Tumblr](http://wearesuchstuff1.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> I did a fair amount of research when writing this work, so most of my references are either to the musical itself or to history. If you're curious I highly recommend doing some research and falling down the history rabbit hole.  
> That being said, I am not an historian and most of my research was done on Wikipedia. I apologize if any of my facts are wrong. This is, of course, a work of fiction and I do not own the Broadway production (or any version) of Anastasia.


	7. Daddy's Son

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "God wants no excuses.  
> I have only one:  
> You had your daddy's hands.  
> Forgive me.  
> You were your daddy's son."

“Gleb.”

She hated how much fear was in her voice when she said his name. She shouldn’t have to be afraid of him. He was the one man who had never tried to make her afraid before. But still… the gun was in his hand and there was a hardness in his eyes she had never seen before.

His voice was harsh when he spoke. “You shouldn’t have done it, Anya. It was an act of desperation. And to my consternation I let you go.” He stopped and regarded her coldly. “But not this time. Paris is no place for a good and loyal Russian.”

“We are both good and loyal Russians,” Anastasia retorted. 

_Gleb_ , she silently pleaded, _Gleb, please no_. She couldn’t lose him like this, not to the Red Army and the Bolsheviks, not to the people who took her family, and above all, not to his father.

Still she saw not break in his expressionless mask. “I’ve come to take you home.” 

“I have no home, Gleb. Russia stopped being my home the day my family was murdered.” 

The only place that had felt like home since had been the Winter Palace – not the hospital in Koptyaki, certainly not her flat in St. Petersburg, and not even dazzling Paris, despite her nana being here. But seeing Gleb now, Anastasia realized that it had never been her memories of the place, floating below the surface of her mind, that had made it feel like home. It had been Gleb’s eyes, his low laugh, his lingering scent, and his general presence that had made the palace her home again. Gleb had become her home, not Russia. And now she was losing her home once again. 

Her words seem to split through Gleb’s shield, and emotions – hurt, pain, despair – spilled across his face and into his words. “Stop playing this game, Anya! I beg you.”

“We both know it’s not a game, Gleb.” Tears welled in Anastasia’s eyes and her voice broke around the words. 

A new shadow passed over Gleb’s face – anger, hatred. He held the gun at waist height, not quite pointing at her, but it was there, and she knew what it meant. “If you really are Anastasia do you think history wants you to have lived?”

“Yes,” Anastasia hissed. There had been a rumor in St. Petersburg. The people of Russia had wanted hope in their grey and blood red lives. Her family had not been blameless, Anastasia could see that now, but she could also see in her mind’s eye the energy the rumor of her survival had given her people. She could see the way Count Ipolitov had bowed his head, content in his last moments to have seen his princess one last time. She had seen how Vlad had smiled at her, how Lily had cried at her return, and how her nana had hugged her so tightly it was as if her entire world had been returned to her.

All these people had been happy to know she was alive, but it was Gleb – who had held her in his arms and brushed his fingers over her skin, whose heat and sent comforted her and who had pulled her out of the line of gunfire – who didn’t want her to be alive. Gleb who wished she had died in Yekaterinburg. Yet somehow it was Gleb’s opinion that was most important to her. 

Her words came out as a sob. “Why don’t you?” 

“The Romanovs were given everything,” Gleb’s voice was filled with disgust, “and gave back nothing until the Russian people rose up and destroyed them.”

He had been pacing steadily closer to her and now he stood before her, gun in hand, so close she could have reached out and touched his powerful chest. 

Anastasia set her shoulders, lifting her chin to meet Gleb’s eyes defiantly. He didn’t want her – didn’t love her. He didn’t even want her to be alive. 

“All but one.” Her voice was proud, Anastasia noted distantly. A princess’s voice. She grabbed the barrel of the gun in one quick motion, pulling it to her so that the point rested against her chest, just above her heart. Gleb almost seemed to flinch back, but she held the gun to her, shocked at how cold it was against the skin of her breasts. “Finish it,” she spat, her gaze never leaving Gleb’s, her hand steady even as the gun rose and fell with her breath. “I am my father’s daughter.”

“And I am my father’s son!” Gleb shouted, grabbing her arm with his free hand and pressing the gun into her chest just a bit more firmly. Then, suddenly, Gleb shoved her away. Anastasia stumbled back a few steps, and when she looked back up Gleb had the gun pointed at her head. 

With a flick of Gleb’s thumb the safety clicked off.

“Finish it I must.” 

There was a rushing – a ringing – in Anastasia's head, almost like music, voices, and shadows. Her world narrowed to a single point, the barrel of the gun, steady in Gleb’s hand.

“My father shook his head and told me not to ask.” Anastasia didn’t know if Gleb was speaking to her or not. Maybe he had just as many ghosts as she did. “My mother said he died of shame.” He was about to add one more.

Anastasia’s eyes traveled to Gleb’s handsome face, and for the first time she could see that the horror and disgust there was directed not at her, but at what he was about to do.

“In me you see them,” she realized aloud. Her shadows were taking shape in a way they never had before. Her father, mother, sisters, and brother looked on, waiting for Anastasia to join them. “Look at their faces in mine, hear their screams, imagine their terror, see their _blood_!” 

She had seen it. The bullets had been deflected – she had sewn jewels into her corset – the corset that had been missing when she’d woken in the woods. She had seen her father shot down, had heard her sister and her mother try to bless themselves before her mother had been shot in the head. The room had filled with smoke, the shooting had stopped, but then the executions had begun. 

Gleb kept speaking, blind to the horrors Anastasia could see. Or perhaps he was seeing horrors of his own. “I must believe he did a proud and vital task. And in my father’s name-”

“Do it!” Anya cut him off, spreading her arms wide – an open target. His eyes focused on her and she could see the dread in them at her words. “Do it and I will be with my parents and my brother and sisters in that cellar in Yekaterinburg all over again!”

Anastasia had huddled with her injured sister Maria against the wall while the smoke cleared. When she could see she had watched the guards shoot her baby brother down with an entire magazine of bullets, then finish the job with one final shot to the head. Olga and Tatiana had been next – another set of bullets to the head. Their few faithful servants had already been gunned down. Then the guards had then turned their bayonets on Maria and Anastasia.

Gleb had heard them screaming in the night. 

“The children; their voices,” Gleb’s breath was coming faster now. “We do what’s necessary.” 

The searing, biting, white hot pain of the guard’s bayonet in her stomach filled Anastasia’s mind.

“Anya.” Desperation. Greif. Beseechment. He wanted his Anya back.

She had flashed back to consciousness when they had tossed her body, limp and unresponsive, onto a stretcher. She had cried out, tried to protect herself, tried to cover her face from the sight of her family dead, mangled, seeped in blood; a sight her mind would sacrifice the rest of her memories – memories of the seaside with her Aunt Olga, of the family pets, of the games she and her sisters had payed – just to forget. Then another blade had bitten into her chest and darkness had swallowed her. 

Anastasia’s mind refocused on the present, on the room in her nana’s house, on Gleb and the gun that shook in his hand. 

“For Russia.” It was all Gleb had known. Could she fault him for that? “What choice but simple duty?” He seemed to be truly asking, begging her to give him an answer, any answer, other than the one that lay before him. “We have the past to burry.

“ _Anya,_ ” his voice broke around her name. 

“The Neva flows, a new wind blows, and soon it will be spring.” The lyrics of the song trembled in the air of the room, so tight with tension Anastasia could almost feel her chest vibrating with it. 

The song was a binding, keeping the people of Russia in check. The comrades at patriotic rallies sang it as propaganda to promote their communist cause. The soldiers had sung it – Anastasia remembered now – at the Ipatiev House to mock the deposed Tsar and his family. Now Gleb recited it, the words laced with desperate intensity, as if he thought that through sheer repetition he could force himself to believe, to go back to a time when it was the rallying anthems of the Bolsheviks and nothing else that drove his every move. 

“The leaves unfold, the Tsar lies cold.” The words Anastasia had been unable or unwilling to hear from Gleb that evening, far away, long ago, when she had danced in Gleb’s arms. Now she knew why.

Gleb faced her, his gun still held, pointed at her head. “Be careful what a dream may bring. A revolution is a simple thing!” His chest heaved and when he shouted his next words at her the look of despair in his eyes broke her heart, not just because of the anguish in them, but because she could tell they both knew what her answer must be.

“For the last time, who are you?”

Anastasia lifted her head, and though she cried out her answer in defiance her heart broke and sobs threatened to burst free from within her. She knew who she wanted to be, but that was not who she was.

“I am the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov!” 

If she could not die in Gleb’s arms, then she would die by his hand.

“Then I will pull the trigger as I’ve been told!” 

Anastasia couldn’t have said to anyone later, if they’d asked, whether she expected the bullet to fly or not. She stood there, eyes locked on Gleb’s face. If she was going to die she wanted Gleb to be the last thing she saw. Across the room, Gleb’s eyes met hers. His hand shook as he adjusted his grip once. 

Twice. 

The release of a stuttering breath was all it took to undo Gleb. The gun clattered to the floor and Gleb collapsed to his knees beside it, his head bowed and his shoulders shaking. “Forgive me.” Gleb’s voice was quiet and broken. “Forgive me, Anya . . . Anastasia.”

The sight of him, defeated on the floor, begging her forgiveness, shattered Anastasia’s heart as surely as any bullet would have. She stepped towards Gleb, her feet carrying her on shaking legs to where he knelt before her. Tentatively she paused there, then reached out to him, her hand brushing back the hair that had fallen into his eyes. In one quick motion, without looking up, Gleb grasped her hand in his, bringing it to his lips.

“Your highness.”

Her heart falling with her, Anastasia sank to the floor in front of Gleb, her dress pooling around her. “No,” she breathed, taking Gleb’s hand and squeezing it so that he would look at her. He did. “ _Comrade_ ,” she told him. A small smile touched her lips. “I would rather be your Anya than anyone else’s Anastasia.”

“But you _are_ Anastasia.” It was the admission Gleb had never wanted to make.

“Yes,” Anya agreed with a breath, grasping Gleb’s hand tighter. “And you know that, and nana knows that, and I know that. And I don’t need anyone else to.”

Gleb’s gaze searched Anya’s, wonder and disbelieve and, Anya could only now realize, love shining through. Reaching out to push a fallen curl behind Anya’s ear, Gleb’s fingers lingered on her bare neck and he leaned towards her. Anya allowed her eyes to flutter closed for a brief moment, then a crease appeared between her eyebrows and she placed a gentle hand on Gleb’s strong chest, stopping him.

“Gleb.” The single word was tortured. Anya opened her eyes once again and met Gleb’s confused ones. “There’s no point.” Her voice had lost all hope. “I can’t go back to Russia. You must know that.” A tear slipped down Anya’s cheek. “I can’t go back and I can’t ask you to stay.”

With a tender touch Gleb wiped the stray tear away from Anya’s face. When she managed to look up at his again she was surprised to find a gentle smile touching his lips as he looked lovingly down at her. “You don’t need to ask.”

Disbelief filled Anya, and yet, despite everything, hope bloomed underneath.

“I can’t go back, not anymore. I see them for what they are now, and I cannot – _will not_ – do what they ask of me.” He grasped her other hand in his, holding tight. “A revolution is not a simple thing and it cannot come and the cost of our freedom or the lives of innocents. I think some part of me knew the moment I got on that train that I would never come back.” There was sadness in his eyes, of course, but also relief. “No, Anya. I will bless my homeland till I die, but you are the one I chose. Today and every day. For the rest of my life.” 

Anya would have cried again had Gleb not stopped her lips with a kiss. His mouth was tender on hers, tentative even, but there was something so right about it that Anya couldn’t help but wish the feeling would never end. She wanted to spend every day for the rest of her life feeling this way.

The sound of a door being forced open split the two apart. Suddenly two guards burst into the room, followed closely by Lily.

“Get away from him, your Highness,” Lily cried, panic in her voice, when her eyes found Anya kneeling next to Gleb. But it was the guards who held Anya’s attention as both of them lowered their guns to point at Gleb.

“Lily, what are you doing?” Anya demanded. She stood and next to her she could feel Gleb follow suit, his hand hovering at the small of her back. Cold fear washed through her, but this was different then when Gleb had held the gun. Then her life had been forfeit – a price she was willing to pay. But now it was Gleb the soldier's aim found.

“Step away, your Highness,” one of the guards ordered. 

It happened all in an instant. Anya stepped forward, quickly placing herself between the gun and the man she loved, but Gleb shouted, – “Anya, don’t!” – grabbing her arm as if to pull her away, and almost in the same moment the soldier’s gun fired. The sound was followed by Gleb’s pained cry.

The world seemed to become silent and slow for Anya. Gleb’s grip on her arm tightened, then released as Anya turned back to Gleb, only to be met by the sight of red welling just below his right shoulder. A scream tore itself from Anya’s lips, bringing sound back into her world, and when Gleb’s knees buckled and he fell Anya sank to the ground with him.

She found she was sobbing, fingers shaking as she pressed the fabric of Gleb’s jacket to the bullet wound, trying to stop the frighteningly quick flow of blood. “What have you done?” she cried as Gleb grimaced. 

Lily’s voice sounded both frightened and angry when she responded from across the room. “Your Highness, we were protecting you. You don’t know who this man is.”

“Yes, I do,” Anya retorted. There was so much red. Had she bled this much when she had been stabbed?

There was the sound of running footsteps, then more guards entered the room, followed closely by her nana and Vlad. 

“What is going on,” Maria Feodorovna demanded, breathless. “What is the meaning of this?”

Lily answered quickly. “I saw him, the Ублюдок.” She all but spat the word at Gleb. “He’s a Cheka. I saw him, he was there.”

Confusion flooded through Anya at Lily’s words but when she turned, her hands slick with Gleb’s blood, to look at the woman the world suddenly flashed bright white.

 

********** 

 

_The boy – young man, really – who stood before her was more than a head taller than she. Despite his Cheka armband he had bowed formally to her. Now he straitened and his dark eyes found her blue ones once again._

_Anastasia felt the smile on her lips widen._

_A noise behind her made the boy’s eyes flick over her shoulder and Anastasia turned to see who was coming. The door to the back of the Ipatiev House had opened and a woman stepped out. She was pretty, her brown hair pulled up in fashionable ringlets, and she carried herself with a poise Anastasia had been used to seeing at court but had found few examples of in Yekaterinburg. The woman paused for a moment as she looked around the garden. Her eyes fell on Anastasia then slid to the boy standing behind her before the woman looked away and descended the stairs. Behind her strode one of the guards, Stepan._

_The thought entered Anastasia’s mind briefly that his eyes looked remarkably similar to the eyes of the Cheka boy who had just bowed to her, if notably less kind._

_The appearance of the guard, however, sent Anastasia running back towards the house. She had been shot at once already – for putting her hand out at a window – and she didn’t want to repeat the incident. By the time she reached the back door to the house Alexei and Maria had joined them and her mama, papa, Tatiana, and Olga had all exited the house as well. When Anastasia glanced over her shoulder the boy was gone._

_“Children,” her papa beckoned them over. “This is Countess Lily Malevsky-Malevitch. Mother has sent her to check on us all.”_

_There was a general clamor of questions from the children but Anastasia stayed quiet. Her nana had sent the Countess. Oh, how she missed her nana and the music box she had given her. She had been just a child but Anastasia had treasured it. It was just another thing lost to them now._

_“Will we ever see nana again?” Anastasia asked after a moment._

_Her mama and papa looked at her sadly. “Don’t fret, малышкa,” her papa comforted, although Anastasia bristled slightly at the nickname._

_Lily took Anastasia’s hand and patted it comfortingly, smiling in agreement. “The Empress has sent me to plead your case in Petersburg, your Hi-” the guard standing behind Lily cleared his throat pointedly and Lily amended, “Anastasia. I’m sure it will not be long now.”_

_Anastasia looked around at the faces of her family – her father smiling down at her, her mother doing her best to conceal the worry lines around her eyes, her sisters and brother seeming to take comfort in the Countess's words – and she remembered them. Really, truly remembered them as they were in life, not death._

_Lily continued, “You will all be home soon.”_

_In actuality, they would be dead soon._

 

********** 

 

Anya’s eyes had glazed over. The white-hot throbbing radiating from his shoulder was beginning to overwhelm Gleb, but even the pain couldn’t defuse his worry. He had seen her slipping in and out of her memories when he had confronted her – his father’s gun still lay accusingly on the floor where he had dropped it – and the need to go to her and comfort her had been almost overwhelming. 

Anya’s pressure on his shoulder relaxed slightly and Gleb could feel his own heated blood spilling faster down his chest. Grimacing at the pain, Gleb reached out and gripped Anya’s arm as she swayed slightly. 

“Anya.”

At his voice Anya seemed to blink back to herself. Her eyes come to focus on Gleb’s, but this was not like the other times, Gleb realized. Although her pressure on his shoulder strengthened again – electing a hiss of pain from his lips – and her face was pail, when she turned back to look at the Countess her voice held no uncertainty. 

“You were in Yekaterinburg. You saw Gleb there.” It wasn’t a question.

Gleb cast his mind back quickly, searching through the haze of pain for the Countess’s face. Of course – she had come out of the house with his father. He had left, but not before she had seen him.

“You remember?” the Countess asked Anya.

“Yes. You came to see us.” There was a note of wonder in her voice that told Gleb Anya still hadn’t gotten used to being able to remember. He moved his good arm to grasp Anya’s hands, still pressed over the bullet wound in his shoulder and covered in his blood. He could feel how hard she was shaking as she tried to stop him from bleeding out. 

Vlad spoke up for the first time since entering the room. “I think I’d better go call an ambulance,” he muttered before slipping out the door.

Anya looked back at the Countess. “Lily, believe me, Gleb did not kill my family.”

“But he was wearing a Cheka armband.”

Gleb couldn’t see Lily. His sight seemed to have narrowed and he focused on Anya’s pail face. 

“Yes. He is a Cheka. But he didn’t kill papa.” Anya’s eyes slid to the Empress. “He didn’t, Nana, please believe me,” she begged.

There was a swoosh of heavy skits on the marble floor and the click of heeled boots as the Dowager Empress crossed the room to stand above them. Gleb focused on the woman’s face, knowing that the deeds of his father were the cause of many of the lines he saw on it.

“Did you kill my family?”

The woman’s voice was hard and cold. Gleb shook his head slowly. “No, your Highness. But my father did.” He could feel Anya turn to look at him and he squeezed her hands a bit tighter. The truth must come out now, all of it. Anya needed to know everything. After what he put her through, Gleb reasoned, she deserved that much. “And I was sent here to kill you.”

There must have been a general reaction to his statement, but there was a ringing in Gleb’s ears that made it hard to hear, although he could feel Anya suck in a breath at his words. The Empress took a half step back, her eyes flicking just for a moment to the gun laying on the floor. She held up a had to stop the guards from advancing.

The pain was making it hard for Gleb to think. He knew he had to finish this. He needed to tell Anya. His gaze settled back on her face – she was so pale it seemed she was the one bleeding out, but her eyes were sharp and blue. God, he loved her eyes.

“My orders were to find a girl who could get me in to see the Dowager Empress, and then to execute her for the good of Russia.” Gleb blinked away the darkness that was beginning to eat away at the edges of his vision. “Only I didn’t just find a girl. I found you. Anastasia. And you made me care. And you made me love more than just lines on a map.” He took another shuddering breath. “You made me love you.” 

Anya was crying openly now, silver tears slipping down her face. When he reached out to brush them away he was surprised to find that hers were not the only hands that were shaking. His fingertips left streaks of red on her cheek. Why was that? It had been important a moment ago.

Another stab of pain sent Gleb reeling, the world tilting around him, a groan escaping his lips. Anya’s sobs sounded frightened as she pulled him into her chest, letting his weight rest against her while keeping tight pressure on his shoulder. When he looked back up Anya’s face was so close he could have kissed her, but his body didn’t seem to be willing to move, even for that. He frowned at the fear on her face. He didn’t like it when she was afraid. He had made her afraid. He had held a gun to her chest and seriously thought about pulling the trigger. He had done that. Then when did she seem more afraid now?

“It’s going to be alright, Gleb,” Anya promised through her tears. “You just have to stay with me, ok?”

Gleb squeezed her fingers gently, but this time the flicker of pain that flitted across his face was caused by Anya’s tears, not the bullet hole in his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Anya,” he murmured. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Finally, no matter how tightly Anya clung to him, she couldn’t stop the blood loss from dragging him under. Even as his world fell into darkness Gleb couldn’t help but think that he would do anything he could, even beat back death, to keep Anya from crying, but, if he couldn’t, at least she would be the last thing he saw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment to let me know what you think!
> 
> Or
> 
> Come say Hi to me on [Tumblr](http://wearesuchstuff1.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> I did a fair amount of research when writing this work, so most of my references are either to the musical itself or to history. If you're curious I highly recommend doing some research and falling down the history rabbit hole.  
> That being said, I am not an historian and most of my research was done on Wikipedia. I apologize if any of my facts are wrong. This is, of course, a work of fiction and I do not own the Broadway production (or any version) of Anastasia.


	8. You and I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You and I  
> We've seen it all  
> Been down this road before  
> Yet we go on believing  
> Stories like ours have happy endings."

The hospital room was bright and breezy. Morning sunlight filtered in thorough sheer white curtains. Anya couldn’t help but wonder if her nana might have had something to do with procuring the best room in the hospital. 

The nurse was quiet but kind. She had been in and out of the room several times during the night, but even now, after the worst was over and the nurse assured Anya that Gleb would heal, she couldn’t help but shudder at the sight of Gleb, pail and still, on the hospital bed. She clung to his hand, watching his chest rise and fall with his breathing, and waited.

She was so fixated that she didn’t hear the door open behind her. 

“Anastasia?” Her nana’s voice made her look up. “The nurse came by. She told us all would be well.”

Anya nodded, her eyes straying back to Gleb’s still face. Her grandmother perched on a chair next to her. “Lily is quite upset.”

Shaking her head Anya looked back to her nana. “She shouldn’t be. She only did what she thought she had to.”

“I quite agree,” was Maria Feodorovna’s only reply. She and Anya sat in silence for a few moments together. This simple act, in and of itself, was a marvel, and the women knew it. Eventually, though, the Dowager Empress broke the silence. “Anastasia? His father did all of this. He is his father’s son.”

Anya’s face was pale and tired and a smear of blood still smudged her cheek, but her eyes were warm and full of love when she looked back down at Gleb. “Maybe, but he is not his father.”

Maria Feodorovna raised an eyebrow, however she seemed more surprised than disapproving. “You’ve forgiven him?”

With a growing smile Anya turned again to her nana. “Of course,” she told her, glad to have a word for it. “He saved me from the Bolsheviks, from the memory of his father, and from himself. And I love him.”

It was the simple truth, and it was a relief to Anya to finally be able to say it. To her surprise the Empress was smiling when she met Anya’s gaze again and her eyes were happy. 

“Then you have found who you are, who your family is, and where you belong.” Maria Feodorovna stood, then leaned down to press a kiss to Anya’s forehead before gilding out of the room. 

 

********** 

 

The room was bright when Gleb’s eyes fluttered open. The air had a sterile quality that brought him back to the hospitals he had visited after the Great War. There was a tightness at his shoulder and when he shifted a shooting pain warned him not to cause the stiches to pull. 

In a moment, his memory came rushing back. The bullet in his shoulder, Anya’s worried face smeared with blood, but worse was the memory of his father’s pistol in his hand, his finger on the trigger, and the terror that he would pull it – such a simple movement – and kill the one thing in his life he loved. 

“Gleb?” Anastasia. His Anya. His eyes found hers and it wasn’t until he could once again see the sapphire blue of her eyes that he could be sure she was safe, that he hadn’t hurt her, and that she was here with him. She was clutching his hand in hers, but a shadow seemed to fall from her face when a smile formed on her lips.

“Hey.” His voice was hoarse. There were tear streaks down her cheeks and she still wore her blue evening gown, ruined now with dark stains he realized slowly must be his blood. Gleb didn’t think anyone had ever been so beautiful. Gingerly Gleb reached out and brushed a stray curl behind her ear.

Capturing his hand in hers, Anya turned her head, pressing a kiss to Gleb’s palm. Her lips trembled. “Hey, I’m ok,” he murmured his assurance, his memory of her choked sobs invading his mind.

Anya nodded, blinking back her tears, then gave him a watery smile. “It’s good to see you awake.”

“How long have I been out?”

Anya shrugged, “Maybe nine or ten hours? They got the bullet out and stitched you up, but you had lost a lot of blood. They weren’t sure-” her voice wavered, but she pressed on, “they weren’t sure at first if you were going to make it.” 

“I’m alright,” he promised her again. 

They sat together for a few minutes, emotions swirling though them, until the guilt building up in Gleb’s chest forced the words to spill out. “Anya, I’m so sorry. Бог forgive me. I love you, Anya. I love you, but I held a gun to your head and seriously thought about pulling the trigger. I lied to you about the Empress and I threatened to kill you. How can you ever trust me again? I’m no better than my father.”

“Hey, hey, Gleb,” Anya hushed him, switching to sit on the edge of his bed. She squeezed his hand in hers. “Don’t. You are nothing like your father. I love you. You are a good man, you saved me. You did not pull the trigger when you were told.” A small smile creeped onto her face. “And I did get you shot, so I think we’re pretty much even.”

Gleb allowed a smile to slip across his face. Anya loved him. Another thought struck him. “You remembered.” 

Anya nodded, her eyes betraying pain and wonder in equal measure. “Yes. I think I remember most of it now. I can see my family, Gleb, as they were before, when they were alive and happy. They’re not just ghosts anymore. Now they’re memories.” Her voice shook, but her smile held firm. 

Grimacing, Gleb pushed himself up against the pillows stacked against the headboard. His injured arm was in a sling, but with Anya’s worried help he was able to slide onto half of the bed and pull Anya gently onto the bed with him. She looked the worse for wear, and he was sure he looked no better, but she fit against his side like she was made to be there and when he hugged her to his chest with his good arm it seemed that her warmth made everything right with the world. 

While perhaps not exactly as he had imagined it, this was everything Gleb had ever wanted.

They held each other in contented silence for a time, and when Anya spoke Gleb could feel her breath against his chest. 

“Gleb, I know why the horse’s name was Romeo.”

Gleb gave a small, low chuckle. “Why?”

“You were right, she was a romantic, but more than that she liked the idea that children’s love for each other could wipe away the sins of their parents.” 

With a small smile Gleb pressed a kiss to the top of Anya’s head, but he could not help the pang of sadness he felt at her words. She may see their family’s sins as sponged away, but the rest of the world would not. He hated to break their closeness now, but he knew that above all he needed to keep Anya safe from anyone who would do what he had almost done. “The Cheka won’t stop looking for you, and they won’t stop trying to kill your grandmother. The rumors never end, and if I don’t report back, the Red Army will know what has happened. You aren’t safe.” 

Anya shook her head, shifting to look up at him. “The word has already gotten out that a Cheka spy was shot by one of the Empress’s guards.” She told him, then hesitated, as if frightened by what his reaction might be, then pushed on. “With your permission, we want to release a statement later today saying that you were killed. Lily, Vlad, and nana are holding a press conference now. They’re telling the world that there never was an Anastasia. She was a dream.” 

“A beautiful dream,” Gleb whispered, running a hand though Anya’s hair. She must have seen the sadness in his eyes, though, because she quickly sat up, her eyes darting between his.

“What is it? Gleb, tell me. We don’t have to release any statements about you that you don’t want. I made my choice, but you can go back if you wish. I would never-”

“Anya,” Gleb cut her off. “It’s not that. I’ve made my choice, too. I love you and I will never regret that, but-” he faltered for a moment, but pressed on. “The Cheka, my father… they really did succeed. They killed off the last of the Romanovs and they took your family away.”

Anya’s smile was small and kind, but there was a power in her eyes, a spark that spoke to her history but also looked with hope to the future. She raised her chin and before him sat not only the girl he loved, but also a princess. 

“The Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov would beg to disagree.”

When her lips found his for the second time their kiss held the promise of a life Gleb couldn’t wait to live, full of love and hope and dreams. 

A year or so later a few people would wonder why the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna was attending the wedding of two nobodies as the family of the bride.  But the age of royalty was over, so not many people paid much attention. It was the height of the roaring twenties, after all, and nothing was ever going to change that.  

The wedding was small and beautiful. Lily wept and Vlad showed his invitation at the door – even though no one asked to see it – amazed as he still was not to have to con his way into this royal wedding.  

Maria Feodorovna walked Anya down the aisle. When they reached the head of the church where Gleb stood waiting, Maria folded Anya’s vail away from her face and leaned in to kiss her cheek. 

“Remember, my dear,” she whispered, squeezing Anya’s hand, “wherever you go I’ll always be with you.” 

With that Anya stepped to the altar and took Gleb’s hand. When Anya smiled at him and vowed, despite her name, despite everything done to her family, to love and cherish him, till death they do part, Gleb could do nothing but smile back at the woman he loved, knowing Anya was not the only one who had found their family in Paris.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment to let me know what you think!
> 
> Or
> 
> Come say Hi to me on [Tumblr](http://wearesuchstuff1.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> I did a fair amount of research when writing this work, so most of my references are either to the musical itself or to history. If you're curious I highly recommend doing some research and falling down the history rabbit hole.  
> That being said, I am not an historian and most of my research was done on Wikipedia. I apologize if any of my facts are wrong. This is, of course, a work of fiction and I do not own the Broadway production (or any version) of Anastasia.


End file.
